UPDATE - Plane With 27 Russian Children From Syria's Al-Hawl Camp Lands In Moscow Region

SHCHYOLKOVO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th October, 2020) A plane with 27 Russian children, who had been evacuated from Syria's Al-Hawl refugee camp, has landed at the Chkalovsky Airport in Russia's Moscow Region, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Friday.

The press service of Russia's children rights commissioner Anna Kuznetsova told Sputnik that the plane belonged to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Later, Kuznetsova said that the evacuated children would be sent to five Russian regions.

"Seventeen children will be sent to the Republic of Dagestan; four children to the Penza Region; two children to the Tyumen Region, the Volgograd Region and the Chechen Republic each," the commissioner told reporters.

Since 2017, Russia has been working on returning children who had been smuggled to Syria and Iraq by their parents. Moscow has already evacuated 122 children from Iraq and 75 more from Syria.

The Al-Hawl camp is located in the north of Syria controlled by the Arab-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). According to various estimates, the camp is home to 65,000-70,000 refugees, mostly women and children from the families of the Islamic State terror group (banned in Russia) militants.