Around 20,000 Iraqis in Syria, including women and children who fled ISIS’ last enclave, are expected to be sent home in weeks under an agreement with Baghdad, a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday.
Thousands of people - many of them the wives of ISIS militants and their children - have streamed out of the besieged enclave at Baghouz over the past weeks, forcing the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to delay an assault to wipe out the last vestige of the extremists’ territorial rule.
Most have gone to al-Hol in northeast Syria where some 65,000 people now live in an overflowing camp.
“Among the people who reached al-Hol camp you have a significant number of people who are of Iraqi origin. Figures are not official but probably we are talking about 20,000 people, including women and children,” Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC regional director for the Middle East, told Reuters in Geneva.
“The Iraqi government has expressed its will to bring those people back, but it’s obviously a challenging situation. Those people are considered as a security threat, so it means that they will have to go through a screening process,” he added.
There was “no official date” to his knowledge for the huge transfer, Carboni said. “But according to our understanding, it’s a matter of weeks or months,” he said.
Most are believed to be civilians, but they could include fighters, the ICRC said.
