WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday announced it had repatriated two dozen Western citizens, from a camp for Daesh prisoners in Syria.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the complex operation involving US agencies, Kuwait and pro-US Kurdish fighters, the United States repatriated 11 US citizens, including five minors.
He said the United States in the same operation facilitated the repatriation of six Canadian nationals, four Dutch, and one Finnish among them eight children.
Blinken in a statement said this is the largest single repatriation operation of US citizens from Syria to date.
The United States has been pushing European governments to bring back citizens who went to fight for the Daesh or their children.
Most European states have done so but at a slow pace and despite initial reservations, especially in countries with a history of jihadist attacks such as Britain and France.
Blinken did not disclose the identity of the people who were repatriated.
According to US media, quoting unidentified sources, those repatriated included an American woman, whose Turkish husband took the family to the territory under Daesh’s control and was later killed, and their nine children.
The repatriations remain a controversial subject in the United States. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) supported US forces to crush the Daesh militant group.
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Five years after the extremists were thrown out from their last territory, the SDF still has more than 56,000 detainees with alleged links to the Daesh group.
Kurdish authorities have been demanding foreign governments to repatriate their citizens but Western governments have responded slowly due to fear of domestic backlash.
