Syrians return to homes as rebels surrender

BEIRUT — Most of the Syrians displaced by recent fighting in the country’s south have returned to their homes after being stranded at the border with Jordan, a U.N. official and a group that closely monitors the Syrian war said Sunday.

The return to areas now held by the government came two days after Syrian troops regained control of the Naseeb border crossing with Jordan, along with a long stretch of the border between the two countries. On Saturday, Syrian troops hoisted national flags at the border crossing point three years after losing it to rebels.

Syria’s government offensive to retake the province of Daraa from insurgents, which began June 19, has displaced some 330,000 people. Many of them headed to the border with Jordan, which refused to allow refugees to cross. The fighting in the border area stopped Friday under a Russian-mediated surrender deal.

Anders Pedersen, the top U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Jordan, told reporters Sunday that just 150 to 200 Syrians remained near a key crossing point into Jordan, adding that as “far as we understand, they are almost exclusively men.”

But the situation “remains very difficult and it’s of a huge concern to us,” Pedersen told reporters, repeating calls for a cessation of hostilities to allow humanitarian operations and for eventually reaching a political settlement to the Syrian crisis.

Syrian opposition activists reported intense shelling and airstrikes on the rebel-held village of Um al-Mayadeen, a few miles north of the Naseeb border crossing. Hours later, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said troops captured Um al-Mayadeen after a battle with opposition fighters.

Although the main rebel groups in the eastern parts of Daraa province have agreed to hand over their weapons as part of the Russian-mediated deal, some have vowed to continue fighting, mostly in western parts of Daraa and the nearby Quneitra region on the front with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Syria has vowed to continue its offensive against the rebels near Israel with the help of its partners in Russia and Iran, even though Israel has said it will not tolerate an Iranian military presence in Syria.

State TV said Syria’s air defense units responded late Sunday to an Israeli “aggression” on an air base in the country’s central province of Homs, shooting down several missiles.

The channel, quoting an unidentified military official, said the attack targeted the T4 air base with six missiles. The report did not mention any casualties but said one warplane was hit and several missiles were shot down before reaching their target.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said the missiles targeted Iranian troops and non-Syrian, pro-Iranian fighters.

The Israeli military declined to comment on the reported attack.

Meanwhile, the international Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, or CARE, told The Associated Press on Sunday that thousands of displaced Syrians have moved from areas close to the Jordanian border back to towns and villages that recently signed Russian-brokered reconciliation agreements with the Syrian government. It added that more Syrians are refusing to go home out of fears of detention or conscription into the army.

The aid agency said that “waves of people have moved to western Daraa” and Quneitra as the government troops seized control of areas in the southeast of the country.

Many families who sought protection from bombardments and shifting front lines continue to live out in the open, the aid agency said. They “are in desperate need of food, shelter and clean water, which is scarce and prohibitively expensive due to the high demand in densely populated areas,” it added.

Pedersen said U.N. organizations need to respond to the populations in southwest Syria, especially the displaced returning home from the Jordanian border and from near the Golan Heights.

“Our biggest concern right now and our biggest ask is to allow us to move in … to reach the populations that we know are in greatest need,” Andersen said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some 60,000 Syrians have returned to their homes while thousands of others fled to another area, adding that they feared detention by government forces or being drafted to the military.

Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.