The government said Monday it had brought home 10 French children of jihadist fighters overnight from a refugee camp in Syria, the latest in a piecemeal repatriation process since the Islamic State group was ousted from its Syrian base in March 2019.
“France has carried out the return of ten French minors, orphans or humanitarian cases, who were in camps in northeast Syria,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“These children have been turned over to French judicial authorities, are receiving medical treatment and have been taken in by social services,” it said.
The ministry did not provide details on their parents.
France has now repatriated a total of 28 children from war-torn Syria, where hundreds of its citizens went to fight along IS insurgents as they tried to establish a so-called “caliphate.”
Rights groups have urged the government to quickly bring home at least the minors who were brought by their parents to the conflict zone or born there during the years of fighting.
But many of the estimated 300 French children being held in the Kurdish-run camps in Syria are with their mothers of fathers, and France has insisted that French nationals must face local justice.
Source: Guardian Newspaper
