Syrian government calls on its refugees to return home
The Syrian government has called on refugees to return, saying it had successfully cleared large areas of terrorists.
The rare appeal reflects the government’s growing confidence after more than seven years of war. While officials usually appeal to Syrians abroad to return during television appearances and interviews, this is the first formal appeal on official media.
Syrian government forces, with support from Russia and Iran, recently retook large areas near the capital, Damascus, and are waging a new offensive in the south that United Nations officials say has displaced more than 270,000 people.
The UN Security Council scheduled closed consultations for today on the offensive and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the south-west at the request of Sweden and Kuwait.
The government controls more than 61 per cent of Syria, compared with early last year, when it held just 17 per cent, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict.
The government refers to all rebels as terrorists.
More than 5.6 million Syrians have fled the country. The foreign ministry has said many internally displaced people have already returned home, urging refugees to do the same.
Many Syrians are unable to return because their homes were destroyed in the fighting, or because they fear military con-
scription or retribution from government forces.
Also on Tuesday, a senior UN official visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus that government forces recaptured in May. The Yarmouk camp, a built-up residential area once home to tens of thousands of Palestinians and Syrians, was for years held by ISIS and other insurgents, and was the scene of heavy fighting.
“The scale of the destruction in Yarmouk compares to very little else that I have seen in many years of humanitarian work in conflict zones,” said Pierre Krahenbuhl, the commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
The camp, once home to 160,000 Palestinian refugees, now lies in ruins. Mr Krahenbuhl, on a three-day visit, also met displaced Palestinian refugees in areas around Damascus. They expressed anxieties about the prospects of their return and reconstruction, he said.
Mr Krahenbuhl said US funding cuts had created “the largest yet funding shortfall in UNRWA’s history”. The agency has a deficit of US$446 million (Dh1.63bn), he said, and has since launched a plan to raise $200m from other donors. He said the priority was to keep schools in Syria open for Palestinian refugees.
UNRWA provides basic services to Palestinian refugees and their descendants from what is now Israel, who number about five million scattered across the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.