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Ain Issa (Syria) (AFP)

More than 9,000 foreigners, mostly children, linked to the Islamic State group are present in a camp for the displaced in northeast Syria, a Kurdish spokesman said Monday.

The total number of foreigners in Al-Hol camp includes more than 6,500 children, Luqman Ahmi, official spokesman for the Kurdish authorities told AFP.

The figure was from a week ago, he said, before the US-led Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces announced the end of the IS "caliphate" in the eastern village of Baghouz.

Tens of thousands of people fled the shrinking jihadist bastion over the past months.

Suspected jihadists have been weeded out and detained.

Women and children have meanwhile been trucked up to Kurdish-held camps for the displaced further north including Al-Hol.

The SDF on Saturday announced the end of the "caliphate" proclaimed by IS in 2014 across a large swathe of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

? 2019 AFP