The group of four women and nine children, aged 6 to 16, arrived in Prishtina’s Adem Jashari airport along with other Kosovo citizens late Friday night.

They were received by the Minister of Interior Bledi Çuçi and his Kosovo counterpart, Xhelal Sveçla, the heads of police of both countries, namely Gledis Nano and Samedin Mehmeti, and the Director of The Coordination Center for Countering Violent Extremism, Lejdi Dervishi.

The operation to repatriate Albanian nationals from the conflict zones in Syria and Iraq took place as part of the bilateral Kosovo-Albania cooperation and through assistance of the United States of America under coordination with U.S. embassies in Tirana and Prishtina.

Interior Minister Çuçi expressed gratitude to the United States of America for contribution to the successful conduct of this repatriation operation, underlining that work to bring more Albanian children and women back home will go on, also based on the lists earlier compiled in collaboration with the Lebanese partners, Major General Major Abbas Ibrahim, and Albania’s Consul General of Albania in Lebanon Marc Ghorayeb.

Twenty-five other Albanian women and children whose husbands and fathers joined Islamic State terror group and most often have been killed in the fighting have been brought back home in three previous missions, the last one in July 2021.

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