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SYRIA-REFUGEES
Around 900 Syrian refugees return to homeland from Lebanon
BEIRUT, July 28, 2018 (BSS/Xinhua) -Around 900 Syrian refugees gathered in Shabaa in Lebanon Saturday morning to return to their homeland through Masnaa border crossing.
“The Lebanese General Security supervised the process by carefully checking the names of the returnees using lists prepared ahead of time for this purpose,” the Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) reported.
It added that the return of refugees is done using buses offered by the Syrian government.
This is the fourth round of refugees to go back to Syria in a one month period.
On June 28, the first round of 400 refugees returned to their homeland from Arsal to Qalamoun via Wadi Hmayyed.
Meanwhile, around 400 refugees returned to their homeland on July 7 from camps in Arsal to Qara, Jarajir and Ras al-maara in Syria.
On July 23, around 850 Syrian refugees from Arsal in Lebanon returned to their homeland through Zemrani border crossing.
The Syrian refugees’ crisis has been a hot topic in Lebanon lately.
More than one million Syrian refugees are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Lebanon. The government estimated the true number of Syrians in the country to be 1.5 million.
To facilitate the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland, Russia drafted a strategy for this purpose and presented it to the Lebanese authorities.
The strategy, drafted by the Russian Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came after a meeting in Helsinki, Finland between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump earlier this month.
According to the strategy, a Russian-Syrian-Lebanese security committee will be formed to facilitate the legal return of Syrian refugees from Lebanon to their homeland.
The strategy aims at securing the return of 890,000 refugees to Syria.
BSS/XINHUA/AU/15:50 hrs