- Syrian Observatory says tens of thousands have returned home in southern Syria
AMMAN: Only between 150 and 200 people remained Sunday in the immediate vicinity of Syria’s border with Jordan having fled a Syrian regime offensive to retake Daraa province, the United Nations said Sunday.
“Around 150 to 200 people right now at the border,” Anders Pedersen, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Jordan, told a news conference in Amman.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, tens of thousands have returned home in southern Syria since a cease-fire deal announced Friday between regime ally Russia and rebels to end more than two weeks of deadly bombardment.
While expressing caution with the figures, Pederson said: “The only thing we know is that we have a very high number of IDPs (displaced) throughout the southwest” of Syria.
He said the United Nations was on standby with convoys to provide aid to the displaced.
“We keep on repeating our appeal to the partners, to the parties of the conflict on the ground in Syria, to please allow us access,” he said.
Since June 19, a deadly regime bombardment campaign on Daraa province had caused more than 320,000 people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations, to the sealed border with Jordan and the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan.