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| - Save the Children Monday urged Iraq and Western countries to scale up efforts to bring home families from Syrian camps housing civilians displaced by the fight against the Islamic State group. Tens of thousands of foreigners, including from neighbouring Iraq, live in camps in Syria's Kurdish-run northeast after they fled the fighting that led to the territorial defeat of the jihadists' self declared "caliphate" in 2019. Many are children. Some in the camps are accused of ties to IS, which attracted foreigners to its ranks after it declared its proto-state across large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014. "Some 27,500 children are waiting to be repatriated" with their parents, Save the Children said in a statement. "With living conditions... deteriorating rapidly, the agency is calling on all states with nationals trapped in the camps to step up efforts to return them, with a particular urgency for medical cases," it said. The non-governmental organisation said the coronavirus pandemic was slowing down repatriations. Only around 200 children returned to their country of origin from northeast Syria in 2020, compared to 685 the previous year, it said. Last month, the United Nations sounded the alarm over worsening security in the overcrowded Al-Hol camp, reporting 12 murders of Syrian and Iraqi residents in just the first two weeks of January. Kurdish officials have criticised Iraq's lack of action in bringing home its nationals. Western nations have also been largely reluctant to repatriate their IS-linked citizens held in northeast Syria, though some have brought home women and children on a case-by-case basis. ah/dwo
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