Sharjah 24 – AFP: More than 22,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria this week via two border crossings, Syrian security sources said Thursday, as Israel pounded Lebanon in a fresh cross-border escalation.
"More than 6,000 Lebanese and around 15,000 Syrians" have entered Syrian through the Jdeidet Yabus border, also known in Lebanon as Masnaa crossing, said one security source requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
A second security source reported "around 1,000 Lebanese and some 500 Syrians have passed" through another crossing.
More than 774,000 Syrian refugees are registered with the United Nations in Lebanon, but the tiny country says it hosts some two million of them -- the world's highest ratio of refugees per capita.
Having fled more than a decade of war at home since 2011, some Syrians have now been among the victims of the latest Israeli strikes on Lebanon, nearly a year into cross-border exchanges between Israeli forces and “Hezbollah” militants.
Lebanon's health ministry said Thursday that 19 Syrians were among 20 people killed in an overnight Israeli strike in Yunin in the Bekaa valley, after the Israeli military said it hit “Hezbollah” targets in eastern Lebanon.
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, told AFP that "at least 87" Syrians -– 35 men, 16 women and 36 children -- had been killed in the recent escalation in Lebanon, not including the Yunin strike.
At least 338 Syrians, including 126 children, have also been wounded, the agency said.
Also Thursday, the Israeli military said its fighter jets struck "infrastructure along the Syria-Lebanon border used by “Hezbollah” to transfer weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon".
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said Israeli warplanes targeted a crossing that links Syria's Qusayr area to Lebanon, reporting "a number of wounded" in "the first Israeli" targeting of Syrian territory since Israel began pounding Lebanon this week.
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