'They almost killed my child': Women in Syria's Roj camp describe night of gunfire and fear

Kurdish-led armed forces opened fire inside Syria's Roj camp on Friday evening, with bullets tearing through tents housing children, after several days of protests by women demanding better treatment inside the facility, according to multiple accounts shared with Middle East Eye.

No one was reported killed or wounded. But women inside the camp, which holds thousands of foreign women and children, relatives of suspected Islamic State (IS) group fighters, described a night of chaos and terror that has left them and their children severely traumatised.

MEE reviewed videos, images and voice recordings obtained from sources inside Roj camp, which appear to show the aftermath of the confrontation, including the sound of gunfire and scenes of panic among women and children.

Friday's violence followed several days of what women in the camp described as peaceful protests demanding an end to alleged abuses and the repatriation to their home countries.

The incident comes amid growing concern from rights groups over conditions inside Roj and renewed calls for international intervention.

MEE reported in June that violations inside Roj had increased "significantly in both frequency and severity" since January, according to a report by the Swedish-based organisation Repatriate the Children (RTC), which drew on testimony from more than 40 women held in the camp between January and May.

According to several women who spoke to MEE, the confrontation began around 6pm when Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) personnel entered the camp in armoured vehicles and established a “human shield” on the main road. Detainees said women began gathering to understand why the forces had entered, before being ordered back to their tents.

Hoda Muthana, a woman detained in the camp, said the situation escalated after women challenged the soldiers' presence.

"The Kurds provoked the women for their own propaganda. The women then reacted, and the Kurds began to shoot in the air, but one soldier shot through the tent," she told MEE.

Muthana said bullets tore through a neighbouring tent belonging to an Indonesian family before passing dangerously close to where her son was sheltering.

"My child had been lying there for about half an hour already before the shots went through," she said. "The tent is all material. We don't know where to hide. Our nightmare came true. We are always in a routine of shielding ourselves inside the tent."

"If the shot had been one or two feet lower, it would have hit my child," she added. "I couldn't move from fear. We were only a few feet apart. They almost killed my child."

Muthana’s testimony also shed light on what she described as calculated propaganda tactics employed by the SDF.

She claimed that soldiers used their mobile phones to record the women’s reactions during the confrontation, aiming to create a narrative that would portray the detainees as “inhumane and radical” to international observers.

"The administration in Roj camp is propaganda con artists," she said. "They are always thinking of ways to make us look inhumane and radical so the public and governments don't sympathise with us."

Muthana said the stand-off lasted roughly four hours. She added that several women nearest the guards were beaten during the confrontation.

According to Dalal*, a Bosnian woman detained in Roj camp whose name has been changed for safety reasons, the protests were triggered by a violent beating of a Russian detainee who refused to hand over her money and mobile phone during a night raid earlier that week.

"The protests were a few days ago... and they started because the Kurds beat up a woman from Russia because she didn't want to give them her personal money and phone," she told MEE.

She said the assault reverberated across the camp.

"That night they hit her so hard that it echoed through the camp."

According to Dalal, the incident marked a turning point after months of alleged night-time raids, beatings and confiscation of personal belongings, prompting women to resist security personnel entering the camp openly.

"That night the women gathered their courage for the first time, and everyone came out to see what was happening," she said. "Since then we haven't let them enter the camp."

Dalal said the women believed the confrontation on Friday was a direct consequence of that resistance.

Dalal travelled to Syria in 2015 on the urging of her husband, who was later killed. She said she remained trapped in IS-held territory because she had no safe way to leave until she eventually escaped in 2017, but was then subsequently detained by Kurdish forces before being transferred to Roj camp, where she has remained ever since with her two children.

"I want deportation," she said. "I do not want to stay in Syria."

Another woman inside the camp, who spoke to MEE on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns, said many of those who confronted the guards on Friday were unwell, unarmed and had gathered only to protect their children.

"Those moms in the camp, the majority are sick - no medical attention for years - or [have] had injuries from before, overweight and unarmed," she said. "All they do is just gather to protect a child and to speak with the soldiers."

She said her two young children believed they were about to be shot after gunfire erupted inside the camp, saying they had already experienced bullets passing through a neighbouring tent during an earlier incident.

"My daughter, who is just seven, ran and hid under a plastic chair," she said. "The kids were screaming. Even I found myself screaming. It's a moment you can't control, especially when your whole family is already living with PTSD."

She also expressed that years of detention had left many families physically and psychologically exhausted, arguing that the latest violence underscored the urgency of finding a lasting solution for those still held in the camp.

"We are humans, and those innocent children have rights too," she said. "For a decade we've been seeing our children live in extreme danger. Please react before it's too late."

"I can tell the PKK [Kurdish Workers Party] and YPJ [Women's Protection Units] are extremely angry with the coalition and the new government, and they take it out on unarmed, sick women and children," one woman said.

Muthana elaborated on her belief that Friday's confrontation had been deliberately staged to portray the detainees as violent and extremist.

"They want to provoke us to create reactions, and these reactions are then shown to countries or the Syrian government to keep us under their control," she said.

“The Kurds use a blanket judgement on us all and treat us inhumanely because they believe we came here to commit genocide against their people. I was 20 when I came to Syria and had never even heard of the Kurdish race before. Many younger women have said the same,” she said.

“Our captivity is personal for them, and in their ideology, which in my opinion is similar to ISIS, they are allowed to do anything they want to us. They've told us numerous times that if the world wasn't watching, they would've raped and killed all of us,” she added.

Most of the women now hoped the Syrian government would eventually assume responsibility for the camp.

"We want the Syrian government to take control of this camp," Muthana said. "All we want is to go home and be with our families."

Friday's shooting is not the first time women in Roj have reported guards firing weapons during a confrontation. Human Rights Watch reported in February that a Trinidadian woman described a similar episode on 31 January, when security forces arrived at her tent "shooting in the air" before ordering women out into freezing temperatures.

Roj camp, near the Iraqi border in Hasakah province, is administered by the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) and guarded by the Kurdish-led SDF.

It holds around 2,300 people, mostly foreign women and children, as of MEE's most recent reporting, and became the country's last major detention camp for relatives of suspected IS fighters after the collapse of the larger al-Hol camp in January.

MEE has contacted the SDF for comment, but received no reply by the time of publication.

As Damascus seeks to expand its authority in eastern Syria, women such as Muthana say they are increasingly placing their hopes in the government, which she described as the only possible escape from a camp that has become unbearable.

"If the devil offered us a safe haven away from the Kurds, we would take it," she said. "All we want is to go home and be with our families."