More than 200,000 Syrian refugees have returned home since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in early December, the UN announced today, ahead of a visit to the country and the region by High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, Agence France-Presse reported.
For the period from December 8, 2024 to January 16, 2025. Some 195,200 Syrians have returned to Syria, according to UNHCR figures published by Grandi in "Ex".
"I will soon visit Syria - and neighboring countries - as UNHCR steps up its support for returnees and host communities," he added, quoted by BTA.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians who fled Israeli bombings in Lebanon returned to their own country even before the coalition led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forced Bashar al-Assad to flee to Russia.
The civil war in Syria began more than 13 years ago with the bloody repression of protests against the Assad regime. More than 500,000 people have died in the conflict. Since 2011 Since then, millions of Syrians have fled the civil war, economic and humanitarian crisis to seek refuge in neighboring countries and beyond.
Neighboring Turkey, which shares a border with Syria of over 900 km, is still hosting some 2.90 million Syrians who have fled since 2011. Turkish authorities, hoping for a large number of refugees to return to Syria to quell strong anti-Syrian sentiment among the population, are allowing one member of each refugee family to travel to Syria and return three times by July 1, 2025, to prepare for resettlement.