US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stressed the need to return the detained ISIS fighters to their countries, noting that their issue cannot remain unresolved.

Blinken said on Monday that 10,000 ISIS fighters are still being held in camps run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, describing the situation as unacceptable.

This came in a speech he delivered at a ministerial meeting of the International Alliance to confront ISIS in the Italian capital, Rome, with the participation of foreign ministers of more than 40 countries, in addition to the Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the representative of foreign policy in the European Union.

The meeting, which was chaired by Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and American Anthony Blinken, focused on the efforts of the coalition to defeat ISIS, and also discussed the organization's spread in the African Sahel region.

France and Britain - two of the largest allies of the United States - were among the most reticent about returning their citizens, despite repeated calls by the US administration even during the era of former US President Donald Trump.

Blinken praised Italy, which is one of the few Western European countries to return these fighters, and welcomed the efforts made by Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan, which he said have returned 600 fighters and their family members, and approved rehabilitation programs for them.

Blinken went on to say that financial support must be increased for the areas from which ISIS has been expelled.

The meeting was held in Rome for the first time in attendance since February 2019 (Reuters)

help

On the Syrian issue, Blinken announced that Washington will provide an additional 436 million dollars in humanitarian aid to the victims of the crisis in the country, saying that there is a need to seek lasting peace, a ceasefire and the safe delivery of aid in Syria.

He also said that the only way to a political settlement in Syria is reconciliation and peace and the start of construction.

For his part, the Italian Foreign Minister called for the formation of a new working group to confront the "growing threat of the Islamic State in Africa."

The organization, which was originally a splinter branch of al-Qaeda, seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Military victory over the Islamic State was declared in 2017, but the group has since been waging an insurgency in parts of northern Iraq and a border area with Syria.

The past few months have seen more than 25 deadly attacks, which Iraqi officials have blamed on Islamic State militants.