Three children of notorious Australian terrorist living in a Syrian refugee camp want to come home

Australian terrorist Khaled Sharrouf’s three orphaned children have been found alive in a refugee camp in Syria.

Zaynab, 17, Hoda, 16, and Hamza, eight, left the ISIS stronghold of Baghouz only a week before Kurdish forces took control over the region.

They are now staying in the Al-Hawl refugee camp, home to about 70,000 refugees in northeast Syria.

The Sharrouf children are listed as members of the camp on Kurdish administrative documents seen by The Australian.

Zaynab, who was married to her father’s best friend in Syria aged 13, is with her two children Ayesha, three, and Fatima, two.

She is seven months pregnant and her health is deteriorating, according to her maternal grandmother.

‘Zaynab is seven-and-a-half months pregnant, she’s feeling very fatigued,’ Karen Nettleton told the ABC as she begged for the Australian government to help bring the children home.

‘Hodeh’s got a foot injury, she has no feeling in her foot so it’s very difficult for her to get around,’ she added.

The family is believed to be one of nine families from Australia in the camp.

Khaled Sharrouf became Australia’s most notorious home grown terrorist after images circulated of him and his two sons in 2014 embracing their new lifestyle.

In one of the photos, his son Abdullah, then nine, posed with a severed head of a soldier.

Their Sydney-based mother, Tara Nettleton, smuggled the children out of Australia after her husband had already left to join the caliphate.

In 2015, reports emerged that the eldest daughter Zaynab had married her father’s best friend, Mohamed Elomar.

Elomar is believed to have died in an airstrike in 2015, and reports from the Al-Hawl camp indicate Zaynab has two daughters, aged three and one, living with her in the camp.

Nettleton is believed to have died from complications with an illness in 2016, while Sharrouf and his two eldest sons were believed to have been killed in a targeted airstrike in 2017 near Raqqa.

Among the nine Australian ISIS families, there are 19 children; five of which are under the age of two and another 12 under the age of 10.

There are fears the sheer amount of young children may lead to pressure on the government to repatriate the families for the sake of the children.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has indicated his desire to keep terrorists off Australian soil.

‘Australian officials cannot ­facilitate the safe passage of ­people out of the conflict zones,’ a spokesman for the government said.

‘Anyone fighting with or providing support or associating with ISIS or other terrorist groups has committed a serious crime and will face the consequences should they return to Australia.

‘However, the Morrison government is determined to deal with these people as far from our shores as possible and ensure that any who do return do so with forewarning and into the hands of the appropriate agencies.’

Australian women Janai Safar and Zehra Duman have also been identified in the camp.

Source: Daily Mail