The repatriation involved 32 children and 15 women who will undergo medical and social monitoring, the French foreign ministry says. 

France has brought back 47 French nationals from northeastern Syria, the country’s foreign ministry said, after a United Nations committee condemned Paris for failing to protect its citizens held in the war-torn country.

The operation involved 32 children and 15 women, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

Hundreds of women and children, many of them holding foreign nationalities, have been held in camps in the region since the collapse of ISIL (ISIS) in 2019, although the statement did not specify which camps the repatriated women and children had been held in.