Thousands of Syrians flee to Lebanon after massacres in coastal region
Thousands of Syrians from the unrest-hit coastal area have fled to neighboring Lebanon, mostly through unofficial crossings, after around 1,000 people were killed there in clashes and massacres, mostly civilians.
The U.N. refugee agency said in a statement that according to local authorities, 6,078 people have arrived in about a dozen villages in northern Lebanon's Akkar province fleeing the fighting and mass killings, while arrivals in other parts of the country were still being verified.
Lebanon is hosting more than 755,000 registered Syrian refugees, with hundreds of thousands more believed to be unregistered. Since the fall of Assad, the flow had begun to reverse, with the U.N. reporting that nearly 260,000 Syrian refugees have returned home since November, about half of them coming from Lebanon.
Syria's interim government on Monday announced the end of a days-long military operation against insurgents loyal to ousted president Bashar Assad and his family in the worst fighting since the end of the 13-year civil war in December.
The Defense Ministry's announcement comes after a surprise attack by gunmen from the Alawite community on a police patrol near the port city of Lattakia Thursday spiraled into widespread clashes across Syria's coastal region, during which monitoring groups said hundreds of civilians were killed.
Syria's new interim Islamist rulers are struggling to exert their authority across the country and reach political settlements with other minority communities, notably the Kurds of the northeast and the Druze in southern Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said 1,130 people were killed in the clashes, including 830 civilians.
Source: Associated Press
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