The Azerbaijani government announced that it repatriated 16 citizens, including seven women and nine children, from Syria on July 18 and 19.
The Azerbaijan State News Agency, citing the Foreign Ministry on Monday, July 20, said the operation followed phased and coordinated procedures carried out by the relevant government bodies.
The agency said a government task force traveled to Syria to verify the citizens’ identities and conduct initial medical and psychological examinations. Azerbaijan’s embassies in Syria and Turkey, along with its consulate general in Istanbul, then secured return documents and airline tickets for their journey home.
The authorities intend to enroll the returnees in social rehabilitation and reintegration programs, the agency said. It added that the government would continue measures to protect and evacuate Azerbaijani citizens who have become victims of armed conflicts abroad.
The Azerbaijani government did not specify where the citizens had been staying in Syria or why they were in the country.
Several foreign women and children remain in Syrian camps that house families of people suspected of affiliation with the Islamic State group.
Since the group was declared defeated in Syria in 2019, foreign women and their children have remained in camps in northeastern Syria. Many of the women had been associated with Islamic State fighters, and most were concentrated in the al-Hol and Roj camps.
Earlier Repatriation
The latest announcement was not the first of its kind. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry previously announced that 23 citizens, including seven women and 16 children, had been returned from Syria on June 7, 9, and 11.
The Azerbaijan State News Agency said on June 13 that the return was conducted through phased and coordinated government measures. The first stage involved locating and identifying the returnees and confirming that they held Azerbaijani citizenship.
Members of a joint government task force responsible for returning citizens from crisis zones were sent to Syria to conduct initial medical and psychological examinations, the agency said.
Two Tunisian Families Transferred
The administration of Roj camp in rural Hasakah (northeastern Syria), which houses families of former Islamic State fighters, transferred two Tunisian families consisting of four women and children.
The camp administration said on July 8 that the transfer followed the completion of the necessary legal and administrative procedures. However, it stressed that the move did not mark the beginning of a broader plan to return foreign nationals to their countries.
Hakmiya Ibrahim, the co-chair of Roj camp, told Enab Baladi that the two families were not handed directly to the Tunisian government. Instead, they were transferred to the Syrian government following coordination between the Autonomous Administration and Damascus.
Ibrahim said the administration had received information from the Syrian side indicating that the families had male relatives living in Damascus and Idlib (northwestern Syria). The Syrian government would hand them over to their relatives under its established procedures, she added.
Although the transfer raised questions about whether a new phase of foreign repatriations had begun, the camp administration denied that any broad plan was underway.
“This step is not part of a broader plan to return foreign nationals from Roj camp,” Ibrahim said, adding that the operation was related solely to the circumstances of the two families.
She added that the camp was not currently involved in any understandings, agreements, or official requests from other countries seeking the return of their nationals. This means the stalemate that has defined the issue in recent years is continuing.
The statements indicate that repatriations continue to be conducted sporadically and according to the circumstances of individual cases, rather than through an organized international program to remove foreign residents from the camp.
Roj and al-Hol Camps
According to the camp administration, Roj currently houses about 750 families comprising more than 2,200 people from over 50 nationalities.
Women and children make up the majority of residents, while the camp also houses a limited number of men under special circumstances. The diversity of nationalities is among the main challenges facing the camp administration because countries have adopted different positions on repatriating their citizens.
These figures are close to those announced by the Autonomous Administration at the beginning of 2026, suggesting that the number of residents has not fallen significantly despite repatriation operations carried out by some countries in recent years.
Meanwhile, the process of emptying al-Hol camp in eastern rural Hasakah began on February 17. Residents were transferred to Akhtarin camp in the northern Aleppo countryside as part of a broader plan to redistribute the camp’s population.
Evacuations continued in successive groups until the camp was completely emptied. Groups of Iraqi citizens were also returned to their country through coordination with the Iraqi government.
The Syrian Democratic Forces withdrew from the camp in late January before Syrian government security forces took control of it, amid broader changes on the ground in northeastern Syria.
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