Syria’s White Helmets flee

Hundreds of members of Syria’s “White Helmet” civil defence group and their families fled advancing government forces and slipped over the border into Jordan on Saturday night with the help of Israeli soldiers and Western powers, officials said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a brief video statement that he had acted on the request of US President Donald Trump and other leaders.

“A few days ago, President Trump spoke to me, as did Canadian Prime Minister [Justin] Trudeau and others, asking that we help to extract the White Helmets from Syria.

“The lives of these people, who have saved lives, were now in danger.

“I, therefore, authorised their transfer via Israel to other countries as an important humanitarian gesture,” Netanyahu said.

The Syrian Civil Defence group has been widely hailed in the West and credited with saving thousands of lives by operating emergency rescue services in rebel-held areas during years of bombing attacks by Damascus and its allies.

The group says it is politically neutral, but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his backers have said they see the White Helmets as Western sponsored propaganda tools and proxies of Islamist-led insurgents.

A Jordanian government source said 422 people were brought from Syria, over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights frontier and into Jordan, down from a figure of 800 announced earlier by the foreign ministry.

The evacuees would be kept in a closed location in Jordan and resettled in Britain, Germany and Canada within three months.