Britain to take refugee children from conflict areas

LONDON: Britain will take in some unaccompanied refugee children from Syria, North Africa and other conflict areas, the Home Office (interior ministry) said on Thursday, but it did not say how many.

This is in addition to the 20,000 Syrian refugees the government has pledged to take in by 2020. More than 1,000 of them - around half of them children - have already been resettled in Britain under this scheme, the government says.

The Home Office said it would work with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) to identify particularly vulnerable children, though the government has said the majority of refugee children are better off staying in their region of origin so they can be reunited with their families. "The crisis in Syria North Africa and beyond have separated a large number of refugee children from their families," Immigration Minister James Brokenshire said in a statement."