Beirut
Hundreds of Syrian emergency rescuers and their families were evacuated from the country’s southwest via Israel to Jordan as the regime of President Bashar al-Assad takes control of one of the last remaining opposition strongholds.
The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday that an unspecified number of the rescuers and their families were recently evacuated “from the war zone in Southern Syria due to an immediate threat to their lives” at the request of the U.S. and European countries. The civilians were subsequently transferred to a neighboring country, it said.
The Jordanian government said Saturday night that it had agreed to allow passage for 800 Syrian rescuers—known as the White Helmets—and their families in an evacuation and resettlement operation being overseen by the United Nations, according to the government news agency Petra.
After weeks of a Syrian government offensive aided by Russian airstrikes, rebel groups have reached agreements to surrender and withdraw from the remaining areas under their control in the country’s southwest. The exact details of the agreements aren’t clear, but already hundreds of rebel fighters and civilians have boarded buses to the country’s northwest province of Idlib, one of the last remaining opposition-held pockets.
Western nations, including the U.S., have supported the White Helmets, which are the only organized and semiprofessional rescue organization that operates in rebel-held parts of Syria. They have become famous and featured in an Oscar-nominated documentary for saving the lives of thousands of civilians who have come under attack in the Assad regime’s brutal campaign to retake the entire country. In the process they have put themselves at risk as well.
But the risk now facing the White Helmets in southwest Syria is different than the barrel bombs and rockets the regime and its ally Russia have rained down on opposition territory. They fear arrest and worse at the hands of the Syrian regime, which has accused the group of being allied with al Qaeda. It wasn’t immediately clear if all the rescuers had been evacuated.
The rescuers will stay in Jordan for a maximum of three months, according to Jordan’s state news agency. They will then await resettlement in either Britain, Canada or Germany because of the risks they face if they were to remain in Syria.
Canada in a statement said it was working in close partnership with the United Kingdom and Germany to lead “an international effort to ensure the safety of White Helmets and their families.”
The evacuation was an exceptional humanitarian gesture, the Israeli military said, adding that it continues to maintain a nonintervention policy regarding the Syrian conflict.
The Israeli military declined to give more details about the evacuation and if the White Helmets and their families passed through the Israel-occupied Golan Heights to Jordan.
The Jordanian and Israeli governments both have refused to allow Syrians displaced by the government offensive to capture the southwest region of Daraa and Qunietra provinces to cross into their countries.
Jordan said it was overwhelmed with the some 1.3 million Syrian refugees already living there. Israel’s policy of not accepting refugees remains in place, a senior Israeli military official has said, adding that few Syrians would want to seek asylum there.
But both countries stepped up aid deliveries into southern Syria to meet the needs of people fleeing their homes to ramshackle encampments along the borders.
—Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv contributed to this article.
Write to Raja Abdulrahim at raja.abdulrahim@wsj.com
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