France has repatriated 35 children and 16 mothers from camps in Syria where family members of suspected ISIS group militants have been held, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
"France has today undertaken the return to the country of 35 French minors who were in camps in northeast Syria. This operation also includes the return of 16 mothers from these same camps," a statement said.
The minors were handed over to the child welfare services and will be medically monitored, the statement added. The mothers were handed over to the competent judicial authorities.
The French foreign ministry statement thanked local authorities in northeast Syria for their cooperation in making the operation possible, AFP reported.
Human rights groups have long urged the governments of France and other Western countries to bring home the children who were either brought to the territories in Syria and Iraq once controlled by ISIS by their parents or born there during the years of fighting.
Hundreds of children of French nationals are being held in Kurdish-run camps in northeast Syria where malnutrition and disease is rife.
One of the biggest and most overcrowded is Al-Hol where children were witnessing “devastating levels of violence daily, leading to nightmares, psychological problems, and fear for their own lives", according to a Save the Children report released in September 2021.
Last year, an average of more than two people were killed per week, making Al Hol, per capita, one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child, the report noted.
France has argued that its security concerns are paramount, having suffered a series of militant attacks, including the November 2015 assaults on the Bataclan concert hall and other targets around Paris that left 130 people dead.
Many of the children are with their mothers or fathers who pose a risk, and France has insisted that French nationals face local justice.
Before Tuesday's operation, France had repatriated 126 children since 2016.
