BISHKEK -- A Kyrgyz activist says he and his fellow citizens are ready to bring back their trapped compatriots -- mostly women and children -- from Syria and Iraq, 24.kg reported Thursday (August 1).
"There is no need to wait for the state," Kubanychbek Toktosunov, a politician and civic activist, said during a news conference in Bishkek.
More than 1,000 Kyrgyz women and children are languishing in camps in Syria and in Kurdistan, Iraq, according to Toktosunov. Their husbands and fathers are presumably dead or imprisoned militants.
"There are cases of children being left in the camps without their parents," Toktosunov said, adding that volunteers are ready to bring home the women and children and to create a centre for their rehabilitation, all at the volunteers' own expense.
Toktosunov's group plans to repatriate 150 stranded Kyrgyz citizens in September, he said.
