"The Ministry has received a new group of voluntarily returning Iraqis, totaling 96 citizens. These individuals returned from areas including Tal Abyad [Gire Spi], Ras al-Ain [Sare Kani], Idlib, and Azaz on the Syrian-Turkish border to their homeland," said the ministry in a statement.
The individuals were returned through Ibrahim Khalil border crossing, which connects Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province to Turkey’s Sirnak province.
Iraq repatriated 126 nationals from the same places and through the same border crossing on Thursday.
It is not clear why Baghdad chose to return them through Turkey rather than its al-Qaim border crossing with Syria - which has been closed to movement since the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on December 8. It was reopened a few times for the passage of humanitarian aid and return of Syrian soldiers who had fled war.
"This is the final group of returning Iraqis from Syria this year, through Turkish territory via the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing," the Iraqi ministry’s statement cited Safaa Hussein Ahmed, a director at the ministry, as saying.
Following the collapse of Assad’s regime, the ministry asked Iraqi citizens residing in Syria who wish to return, to contact the embassy and register their names.
Millions of Iraqis were displaced when ISIS seized control of swathes of territory in northern and central Iraq in 2014. But their so-called caliphate was brought to an end in 2017 when Iraqi and Kurdish fighters, supported by the US-led global coalition, clawed back territory.
