Medical Evacuations Begin in Eastern Ghouta

Medical relief organizations started evacuating critically ill people from the besieged Eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital, the ICRC said on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse.

At least 29 cases have been approved for medical evacuation to Damascus and at least four patients were evacuated on Wednesday, AFP said, citing the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). The remaining cases will be evacuated in the coming days, according to SAMS.

Eastern Ghouta is one of the last rebel holdouts in the outskirts of the Syrian capital. Around 400,000 people are trapped in the besieged suburbs, with limited access to food and medicine.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that 137 children in the region are in need of urgent medical treatment.

Last week, Jan Egeland, the head of the U.N.’s humanitarian taskforce for Syria, warned that around 500 people in the area were in need of urgent medical evacuation.

Pro-Government Forces Call on Rebels Southwest of Damascus to Surrender

Syrian troops and Iranian-backed paramilitaries called on rebel groups southwest of Damascus to surrender or face certain military defeat, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

The rebels are pinned down in the foothills of Mount Hermon – an area where the Israeli and Lebanese borders meet with Syria. Syrian troops and Iran-backed paramilitaries working alongside Druze militias have been escalating their assault on rebels who are encircled in Beit Jin, the last opposition enclave in the region.

“They were given 72 hours to surrender with fighters to go to Idlib or those who want to stay have to reach a settlement,” Ibrahim al-Jebawi, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) official, told Reuters.

A Hezbollah media unit said the rebels had agreed to discuss the terms of surrender, adding that negotiations over their evacuation to rebel-held Idlib had already started, Reuters said.

Fayez al-Dweiri, a retired Jordanian general, told Reuters that the push is “an effort by Iran and its proxy Hezbollah to expand the lines of engagement with Israel.”

Number of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Drops Below 1 Million

The United Nations said on Tuesday that the number of officially registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon has fallen below 1 million for the first time in three years, AFP reported.

UNHCR counted some 997,905 refugees registered in Lebanon at the end of November, AFP said.

This marks the first time the number of refugees has dropped below 1 million since April 2014, UNHCR spokesperson Lisa Abou Khaled told AFP.

In December 2016, the number of registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon was estimated at around 1,011,366.

According to AFP, nearly 49,000 Syrians left for other countries, returned home or died between 2011 and September of this year. The UNHCR spokesperson said that she could not confirm how many had returned to Syria. “But we know it’s a few thousand in 2017,” she told AFP.

The figures provided by UNHCR do not include the number of unregistered refugees who reside in the country illegally. Their exact numbers remain largely unknown.

Recommended Reads

• Agence France-Presse: Displaced Syrians Survive War but Face Battle Against Cold
• Al-Monitor: All Official Syrian-Lebanon Border Crossings Now Open
• The Times: Foreign Jihadists Hide in Deserts of Syria and Iraq to Evade Justice
• Enab Baladi: Military Scenarios Await Southern Syria
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