The Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria has handed over 12 French orphans born to militant families to a French government delegation, an official said Monday.
The children, the oldest of whom is aged 10, had been living in camps where tens of thousands of people who fled recent fighting against ISIS are still housed.
Kurdish officials handed over "12 orphaned French children from ISIS families to a delegation from the French ministry of foreign affairs," Agence France Presse quoted top foreign affairs official Abdulkarim Omar as saying in a statement.
He said the transfer took place in the town of Ain Issa on Sunday and added that two orphaned Dutch children were also handed over to a government delegation from the Netherlands.
A French diplomatic source said the repatriated children were "particularly vulnerable" and that around 250 other children were believed to be held in several locations in Syria.
The 12 French children will be handed to social services, the source said. Until now, France had repatriated five children from Syria.
France has one of the largest contingents of suspected militants who were captured or turned themselves in, together with their families, in the final stages of the US-backed Kurdish assault on the last fragment of the extremist group’s so-called "caliphate".
The terrorist proto-state eventually died in the village of Baghouz, on the banks of the Euphrates, in March this year, after a months-long US-backed Kurdish assault.
Larger than expected numbers of families emerged from the ruins of the last ISIS enclave and the fate of tens of thousands of them remains unclear.
