Syrian President Bashar Assad said that some of the militants that fought in Syria later fled to Europe and live there as "innocent" refugees.

BEIRUT (Sputnik) — Some of the militants that fought in Syria later fled to Europe and live there as "innocent" refugees, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in his interview with the Yahoo News.

"You can find it on the Net … Those terrorists in Syria, holding the machine gun or killing people, they are peaceful refugees in Europe or in the West," Assad said.

The Syrian president underlined that although he could not estimate the number of such migrants in Europe, "you don't need a significant number to commit atrocities."

Speaking of the US President Donald Trump’s decree banning immigrants from certain countries to enter the United States, Assad stated that it was "an American issue," but added that as for the peaceful refugees from Syria, his priority as president was to bring them back home, "not help them immigrate."

According to the data of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), some 4.8 million people have fled Syria to neighboring countries and Europe, with some 6.6 million being internally displaced within the country since the beginning of the civil war in 2011.