(NCA NewsWire) An emotional man has been reunited with his daughter and grandchildren as four families returned home to Australia after being taken from a camp for Islamic State families in Syria.
Seventeen people — four women and 13 children — touched down in Sydney on Saturday morning.
It is the first repatriation of Australians since two groups of orphans were repatriated in July 2019.
The women and their children had been held in the al-Hol and al-Roj camps in the north-eastern Syria region known as Rojava since March 2019, following Islamic State’s last stand in the village of Baghouz.
They were removed from al-Roj camp near the Iraqi border in an operation involving Australian officials and the Syrian Democratic Forces.
