The United States has repatriated two dozen western citizens, half of them Americans, from Islamic State prison camps in north-eastern Syria where tens of thousands have languished.
The operation is the largest ever of US citizens and comes as rights groups warn of dire conditions in the camps still in use some five years after the ultra-violent extremist movement lost its last territory in Syria.
In a complex operation involving US agencies, Kuwait and pro-US Kurdish fighters, the United States repatriated 11 US citizens, including five minors, as well as a nine-year-old non-US sibling of an American, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Tuesday.
The United States in the same operation facilitated the repatriation of six Canadian citizens, four Dutch citizens and one Finnish citizen, eight of them children, he said.
On March 6, Russia fired a missile into the Ukrainian port of Odesa that exploded about...
