100,000 people fled Lebanon to Syria due to Israeli airstrikes, UN says

Photo: Beirut's southern suburbs, September 29, 2024

About 100,000 people have fled to Syria from Lebanon due to Israeli airstrikes, a figure that has doubled in two days, the UN refugee chief said Monday.

“The number of people who crossed into Syria from Lebanon to escape Israeli airstrikes, both Lebanese and Syrian citizens, has risen to “has reached 100,000,” Filippo Grandi said on social media X.

“The outflow continues,” he warned.

Grandi said the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), which he heads, was “present at four checkpoints with local authorities and the (Syrian Red Crescent) to support the new arrivals.”

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The mass displacement into war-torn Syria began a week ago, on September 23, UNHCR told AFP on Saturday, September 28.

By Friday, September 27, 30,000 people had entered Syria from Lebanon, according to UNHCR. UNHCR Representative in Syria Gonzalo Vargas Llosa said that about 80 percent of them are Syrian citizens, and 20 percent are Lebanese.

“Most of them are women and children, although there are also men. About half are children and teenagers,” he told reporters.

He stressed that they ended up in a country that has itself been suffering from a crisis of violence for more than 13 years and is on the brink of economic collapse.

“People fleeing the bombings arrive in Syria exhausted, traumatized and in desperate need of help,” Vargas Llosa said.

Prepared by: Sergey Daga