Turkey repatriates 150 foreign fighters

Turkey has repatriated 150 foreign fighters since the government started a campaign to send back foreign fighter detainees on Nov. 11, spokesperson of the Interior Minister said on Friday.

A total of 373,592 Syrian refugees have returned to their country, Ismail Catakli told reporters at a press conference, adding that the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey is over 3.571 million as of Friday.

Turkey has declared that it will send thousands of captured Islamic State (IS) militants, mostly from Europe, back to their countries even if their citizenships were deprived.

In the most recent case, three Swiss fighters were sent back to Switzerland, the Turkish Interior Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Among the earlier deported IS suspects were German, Danish, British, American, Dutch, French and Irish citizens, according to local media reports.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)