Syria’s national government and Kurdish authorities in the northeast of the country have agreed to evacuate Syrian citizens from a desert camp that houses people with alleged ties to the so-called Islamic State group (IS).
Al-Hol camp holds around 37,000 people, many of whom are the wives and children of the IS group's fighters.
Sheikhmous Ahmed, an official in the Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria, announced on Monday that an agreement had been reached to return Syrian families from the desert camp, following talks between local leaders, representatives from Damascus, and a delegation from the US-led international coalition fighting IS.
The representatives did not talk about whether Damascus would take control of the camp in the future, Ahmed said.
A previous mechanism had allowed Syrians in al-Hol to return to their communities in Kurdish-controlled areas of the country, with centres established to reintegrate them.
However, this was not the case for the rest of Syria, where a civil war raged for 13 years until dictator Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December after a lightning offensive by rebel groups.
The US has long urged countries to allow the return of their citizens from al-Hol and the smaller Roj camp, which have been described as breeding grounds for extremism.
Although Iraq has repatriated many of its citizens in recent years, many other countries remain reluctant to do so.
The agreement on Syrian nationals comes as part of an attempt at closer cooperation between Kurdish authorities in the northeast and the government in Damascus.
In March, Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), agreed that the SDF would be merged into the new national army.
All border crossings with Iraq and Turkey will come under Damascus' control, as will airports and oil fields in the northeast.
The US has pushed for the central government to take control of prisons in northeast Syria, where around 9,000 alleged former IS group fighters are being held.
