Several Australian women and children who were in a Syrian refugee camp have returned to Australia after smuggling themselves out of the country. (Supplied: Save the Children )
In short:
A group of six women and children have smuggled themselves from Syria and have returned to Australia.
The cohort, who were among those stranded after the fall of Islamic State Group, escaped to Lebanon without Commonwealth assistance.
What's next?
There is a push for a cohort of about 40 people who remain in Syria to be repatriated, after the fall of the Assad government.
A small group of Australian women who travelled or were taken to Syria as partners of Islamic State members, as well as their children, have managed to smuggle themselves out of the country and have now returned home, after years of being stranded overseas.
The Commonwealth is reportedly aware that the group of six recently arrived in Beirut, where they were detained by Lebanese authorities as they did not have valid visas or legitimate entry records.
The six women and children escaped Syria without the support of the Australian government.
The group were issued Australian passports after being processed by Lebanese agencies and passing security and DNA checks by Australian agencies.
The group has now returned to Australia.
The women and children have been under monitoring by Australia for some time, and it had been anticipated that some may try to return on their own.
Last month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejected reports that the government was organising the rescue of an estimated 40 Australians who remain in Syria.
The women and their children who lived under Islamic State rule have been held against their will in the al-Hol and al-Roj camps since the terror group's defeat in 2019.
The circumstances among the cohort differ significantly, while some travelled with knowledge, others were coerced, claim to have been tricked by family members and in some cases were children when they travelled to Syria.
Many of the children in the cohort were born in Syria.
The specific circumstances of the group now returned to Australia are not known.
A spokesperson for Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said travel advice remained that Australians should not travel to Syria due to the dangerous security situation and threat of armed conflict.
"The situation in Syria is becoming increasingly unstable," the spokesperson said.
"The Australian government is not providing assistance and is not repatriating individuals in Syrian [internally displaced persons] camps.
"If any of those people find their own way to return, our security agencies are satisfied that they are prepared and will be able to act in the interests of community safety."
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley sais she was "gravely concerned" by revelations that the group had returned to Australia.
"This is a highly dangerous cohort of individuals who associated themselves with the barbaric Islamic State regime. The Albanese Labor government must come clean: either they knew about this cohort returning and hid it from the Australian public, or worse, family members of Islamic State terrorists returned to Australia without the government's knowledge," Ms Ley said in a statement.
"Now they appear to have returned secretly, raising fundamental questions about how and why they were allowed back in. Australians deserve answers."