Sudan said Saturday it retrieved five nationals who had joined the Daesh/ISIS terrorist group in Syria.

A Foreign Ministry statement said that two women and three children were returned from Syria.

“The five are the first group of nationals held in northern Syria,” the statement said, without giving any exact number of Sudanese held in Syria for joining the terrorist group.

In April 2018, Sudan repatriated 10 nationals who had joined the Daesh/ISIS group in neighbouring Libya.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is a terrorist organization that has exploited the conflict in Syria and sectarian tensions in Iraq to entrench itself in both countries.

ISIS’s stated goal is to solidify and expand its control of territory once ruled by early Muslim caliphs and to govern through implementation of its strict interpretation of sharia.