A senior UN official called Thursday (April 18th) for countries to take responsibility for their nationals stuck in a camp in Syria, including thousands of foreign children of "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) group fighters.
"There is a prime responsibility of states vis-a-vis their own nationals," Panos Moumtzis, the UN regional coordinator for Syria, told reporters in Geneva.
According to the UN children's agency UNICEF, around 3,000 foreign children from 43 countries are housed at the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria alone, which has taken in most of the people fleeing ISIS.
The Kurdish-run camp has seen its population explode from around 10,000 people last December to more than 75,000 people now, Moumtzis said.
According to other estimates, the camp could hold up to 100,000 people, more than 90% of whom are women and children.
The huge influx followed the assault by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the last ISIS holdout, which collapsed last month.
