More than 22,000 flee to Syria as Israel strikes Lebanon: Syria security sources

As Israel hammered Lebanon in a new cross-border escalation, more than 22,000 people have entered into Syria this week across two border crossings, Syrian security sources claimed on Thursday.

According to a security source who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the media, “more than 6,000 Lebanese and around 15,000 Syrians” had entered Syria through the Jdeidet Yabus border, commonly known as the Masnaa crossing in Lebanon.

“Around 1,000 Lebanese and about 500 Syrians have passed” through another border, according to a second security source.

The United Nations reports that Lebanon is home to about 774,000 Syrian refugees, but the small nation claims to be hosting nearly two million of them, making it the country with the biggest per capita refugee population in the world.

Some Syrians have now become victims of the most recent Israeli assaults on Lebanon, almost a year after cross-border exchanges between Israeli troops and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is associated with Hamas in Gaza. The Syrians escaped more than ten years of conflict at home beginning in 2011.

Following the Israeli military’s claim that it struck Hezbollah sites in eastern Lebanon, the health ministry of Lebanon confirmed on Thursday that 19 Syrians were among the 20 individuals who died in an Israeli strike that occurred overnight in Yunin in the Bekaa valley.

Not counting the Yunin strike, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, informed AFP that “at least 87” Syrians—35 men, 16 women, and 36 children—had perished in the recent uptick in violence in Lebanon.

According to the agency, at least 338 Syrians—126 of them children—have also suffered injuries.

Additionally, on Thursday, the Israeli military reported that its fighter jets had targeted “infrastructure along the Syria-Lebanon border used by Hezbollah to transfer weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon”.

Israeli airplanes bombed a border that connects Syria’s Qusayr area with Lebanon, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor. The organization reported “a number of wounded” in “the first Israeli” targeting of Syrian territory since Israel started hammering Lebanon this week.