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dpa
Beirut
Around 1,000 refugees left the remote Rukban camp in Syria’s south-eastern desert on Monday for areas in central Syria, a monitor and activists said, as the country’s years-long war winds down.
The refugees used the Jlaighim crossing to reach areas under the government’s control in the eastern section of Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and activists reported.
The camp is near the al-Tanf security zone, where the United States has a military base. The United Nations said “an unconfirmed number of people” reached the Jlaighim corridor from Rukban and are currently being transported by the Syrian government to Homs.
Hedinn Halldorsson, a spokesperson for the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Syria, told dpa that at least 4,300 people have left the Rukban area in recent weeks.
Imad Ghali, an activist inside Rukban, estimated that there are still some 30,000 refugees at the camp refusing to go to areas under the government control.
They want instead to go to the rebel bastion of Idlib in north-western Syria, the activist added. The refugees’ departure from Rukban to government-held areas comes under a deal conducted in February by Russia, a major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In recent months, al-Assad’s forces, supported by the Russians, have regained vast swathes of territory from Western-backed rebels and Islamist militants. Earlier this month, Moscow called for closure of Rukban near the Jordanian border. Thousands of Syrians, displaced by the war, are living in the camp under harsh conditions.
Most of them fled areas that had once fallen to the Islamic State extremist group in eastern Syria and have been trapped there since Jordanian authorities closed the borders after a June 2017 attack at a border post in which six Jordanian soldiers were killed.
Last year, at least 20 people died at the Rukban camp due to a lack of medical services, according to humanitarian groups.
Beirut
Around 1,000 refugees left the remote Rukban camp in Syria’s south-eastern desert on Monday for areas in central Syria, a monitor and activists said, as the country’s years-long war winds down.
The refugees used the Jlaighim crossing to reach areas under the government’s control in the eastern section of Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and activists reported.
The camp is near the al-Tanf security zone, where the United States has a military base. The United Nations said “an unconfirmed number of people” reached the Jlaighim corridor from Rukban and are currently being transported by the Syrian government to Homs.
Hedinn Halldorsson, a spokesperson for the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Syria, told dpa that at least 4,300 people have left the Rukban area in recent weeks.
Imad Ghali, an activist inside Rukban, estimated that there are still some 30,000 refugees at the camp refusing to go to areas under the government control.
They want instead to go to the rebel bastion of Idlib in north-western Syria, the activist added. The refugees’ departure from Rukban to government-held areas comes under a deal conducted in February by Russia, a major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In recent months, al-Assad’s forces, supported by the Russians, have regained vast swathes of territory from Western-backed rebels and Islamist militants. Earlier this month, Moscow called for closure of Rukban near the Jordanian border. Thousands of Syrians, displaced by the war, are living in the camp under harsh conditions.
Most of them fled areas that had once fallen to the Islamic State extremist group in eastern Syria and have been trapped there since Jordanian authorities closed the borders after a June 2017 attack at a border post in which six Jordanian soldiers were killed.
Last year, at least 20 people died at the Rukban camp due to a lack of medical services, according to humanitarian groups.
