Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria have handed over four women and 10 children to a Canadian delegation in readiness 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 ISIS.
Thousands of foreign women and children remain in overcrowded displaced persons' camps in Kurdish-administered northeastern Syria.
Four wives and 10 children of foreign ISIS fighters “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.
According to AFP, he said the women were aged between 26 and 35, while the children were aged between three and 11.
It was the fourth repatriation carried out by Canada from the overcrowded displaced persons camp, 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 ISIS family members in Syria on a case-by-case basis, and in four years only a handful of women and children had been repatriated.
Since the destruction of the so-called ISIS "caliphate" across Syria and Iraq in 2019, more than 42,400 foreign adults and children with alleged ties to the extremist group have been held in camps in Syria, 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.
