More than 22,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria this week via two border crossings, Syrian security sources said Thursday, as Israel pounded Lebanon in a fresh cross-border escalation.
“More than 6,000 Lebanese and around 15,000 Syrians” have entered Syrian through the Jdeidet Yabus border, also known in Lebanon as Masnaa crossing, said one security source requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
A second security source reported “around 1,000 Lebanese and some 500 Syrians have passed” through another crossing.
More than 774,000 Syrian refugees are registered with the United Nations in Lebanon, but the tiny country says it hosts some two million of them – the world’s highest ratio of refugees per capita.
Having fled more than a decade of war at home since 2011, some Syrians have now been among the victims of the latest Israeli strikes on Lebanon, nearly a year into cross-border exchanges between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants allied with Hamas in Gaza.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Thursday that 19 Syrians were among 20 people killed in an overnight Israeli strike in Younine in the Bekaa valley, after the Israeli military said it hit Hezbollah targets in eastern Lebanon.
