MOSCOW. Sept 19 (Interfax) - Thirty Russian children may be returned from Iraq in early October and a decision on the return of six children from Syria is pending, Russian presidential Children's Rights Commissioner Anna Kuznetsova said.
"We will leave for Iraq after October 6. Court procedures are now being held there. We will leave after the last decision is made on our children. We need literally two days to fly. Thirty children are now ready to fly," Kuznetsova told reporters on Thursday.
Another 500 children from other countries remain in prisons in Iraq and Finnish officials have already asked the children's rights commissioner to speak about the Russian experience of freeing children, she said.
"We can assume that our children may not be in Baghdad, but in remote territories. If we get such information, we will make efforts to retrieve the children," Kuznetsova said.
She additionally said she has visited a camp in Syria where 70,000 people are located and it is very difficult to find Russian children there.
"They are definitely there, we have found six. We will continue searching. It is currently a question of how the agreements will be implemented on the territories uncontrolled by the official Syrian authorities. Soon it will be winter, we are looking for a way to do it," Kuznetsova said.
She said refugees 'from territories where military action occurred, women and children" are in the camp.
An interagency commission on the issue of assisting the return of children who are in an area of combat, led by the children's rights commissioner, was formed in 2017. An algorithm was developed in collaboration with the Foreign Ministry, Emergency Situations Ministry, Interior Ministry, Health Ministry, and other agencies that was used for returning 90 children from Iraq to Russia in December 2018, in February 2019, and in July 2019.
The children were in prisons in Iraq because their mothers, citizens of Russia, were members of terrorist organizations. Many of these children were not born in Russia.