Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria have handed over four women and 10 children to a Canadian delegation for their repatriation, a Kurdish official said.
Western governments have faced mounting criticism for not taking back more of their citizens who traveled to Iraq and Syria to volunteer for the Islamic State group, and the Canadian government was successfully sued.
Thousands of foreign women and children remain in overcrowded displaced-persons camps in Kurdish-administered northeastern Syria, where they are vulnerable to indoctrination by diehard jihadists.
"On Wednesday ... four wives and 10 children of foreign fighters of Daesh [IS] who were living in the Roj camp were handed over to representatives of the Canadian Foreign Ministry," said Khaled Ibrahim, an official in the Kurdish administration.
He said the women were from 26 to 35 years old, while the children were from 3 to 11.
It was the fourth repatriation carried out by Canada from the overcrowded displaced-persons camp of northeastern Syria, Ibrahim said.
On January 21, a Canadian federal court ordered the government to repatriate 23 citizens, 19 of them women and children, from the Roj and Al-Hol camps, without setting a date.
Previously the government of Justin Trudeau had treated IS family members in Syria on a case-by-case basis, and in four years only a handful of women and children had been repatriated.
On Thursday, the Canadian government confirmed the latest repatriation.
"As long as conditions allow, we will continue this work," a Foreign Ministry statement said.
"Amidst reports of deteriorating conditions in the camps in northeastern Syria, we have been particularly concerned about the health and well-being of Canadian children," it said.
Highly sensitive issue
"We reiterate that it is a serious criminal offense for anyone to leave Canada to knowingly support a terrorist group, and those who engage in these activities will face the full force of Canadian law," the statement added.
After IS lost its last scraps of territory in Syria in March 2019, more than 42,400 foreign adults and children with alleged ties to the militant group have been held in camps in the war-torn country, according to Human Rights Watch.
They include around 30 Canadian citizens, 10 of them children, the rights group said in January.
Repatriating them is a highly sensitive issue for many governments, but there has been mounting criticism of their reluctance to bring back their own nationals from the camps.
Last month, U.N. chief Antonio Guterres called for the swift repatriation of foreigners held in Al-Hol, which is home to more than 50,000 people, nearly half of them children.
The head of U.S. Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, visited the camps in March.
"These camps represent not only a flashpoint of human suffering but also an enduring security risk as the more than 30,000 children housed in them are in danger of ISIS indoctrination on a daily basis," a CENTCOM statement Thursday quoted Kurilla as saying.
International NGO Save the Children in a statement welcomed the Canadian repatriation and urged other countries to increase their efforts.
"The need for urgent action cannot be overstated, given the deteriorating humanitarian and security situation, and the uncertainty and fear that the children in the camps live with every day," said its Syria response director, Rasha Muhrez.
