Another group of Australians with IS links leave camp in Syria for Australia
A group has left the al-Roj refugee camp. (ABC News: Baderkhan Ahmad)
In short:
A group of Australian women and children have left a camp in north-eastern Syria and are believed to be on their way back to Australia.
It follows the arrival of four women and nine children back in Australia earlier this month.
Three of the women in that earlier cohort were arrested and charged by federal police.
Another group of Australian women and children have left a camp for the families of jailed and killed Islamic State fighters in north-eastern Syria.
The ABC has seen the bus carrying the group, which left the al-Roj camp on Thursday afternoon, local time.
It was travelling in a convoy with Syrian government officials acting as escorts.
It is believed the group will head to the Syrian capital, Damascus, from where they will then travel on to Australia.
The exact timing of that onward journey is not currently clear.
A bus carrying Australian women and children left the al-Roj camp on Thursday afternoon, local time. (ABC News: Baderkhan Ahmad)
Earlier this month, a group of four women and nine children travelled home to Australia after spending years in the squalid camp.
Three of the women were arrested and charged by the Australian Federal Police upon arrival in Melbourne and Sydney.
They remain in custody. Two have been charged with slavery offences, and the other with joining a terrorist organisation and travelling to a declared terrorist area.
After their departure from al-Roj, seven women and 14 children remained in the camp in Kurdish-controlled Syria.
One woman has been issued with a temporary exclusion order (TEO), banning her from travelling to Australia for up to two years on national security grounds.
It is believed the group that left on Thursday includes all of the remaining Australians, but camp officials are refusing to comment on the latest departure.
Their fate has been the subject of intense wrangling between the Syrian government, which wants to see progress made in the clearing of IS camps, and Kurdish officials who remain in control of al-Roj and the surrounding area.
The Australian government has repeatedly insisted it is not helping to bring the women and children home.
But it is under an obligation to provide them with travel documents, which it did earlier this year, and has conceded there is little it can do to stop them trying to return home.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said he holds the women in the group in contempt for travelling to Syria at the height of the so-called Islamic State's efforts to establish a caliphate.
Some of the women argue they were coerced or tricked into travelling to Syria.
The federal opposition has demanded the government do more to block them returning, accusing it of putting the Australian public at risk.
Legal experts insist there is no legal basis or power to block the group from making the trip, given they are Australian citizens.