France Repatriates 7 Militants' Children from Syria

France said on Wednesday it had brought home seven children of French extremists from northeast Syria.
The children, aged between two and
11 and "particularly vulnerable", were handed over to judicial
authorities and taken into care by social services, the foreign ministry said.
They had been living in the
Kurdish-run Roj and al-Hol camps, where thousands of relatives of ISIS
militants and sympathizers have been held since the 2019 defeat of ISIS in
Syria, a Kurdish source in the region told AFP.
France has so far repatriated 35
children, many of them orphans.
Rights groups have been pressuring
European governments to allow children to return from the crowded camps to live
with relatives.
Kurdish officials have also been
pressuring countries to take back their citizens, warning that they do not have
the resources to guard prisoners indefinitely.
France has insisted it will only
take back children, with mothers to remain behind to face local justice, along
with their husbands.
But many of the women have refused
to be separated from their children.