BEIRUT: Several hundred Syrian rescuers remain trapped in the country’s south with no escape from approaching regime troops, two of them said Monday after a secret evacuation saved many of their colleagues.
Israel on Sunday helped more than 400 people — opposition-linked White Helmet rescue workers and their families — flee a neighbouring pocket of southwestern Syria as government forces bore down on them.
They were then taken to Jordan and will be resettled to western nations including France, Britain, Germany, and Canada.
“It was the only alternative for our trapped volunteers who would otherwise have faced detention or death at the hands of the Syrian regime and its ally Russia,” the group said on Monday.
Ninety-eight male and female White Helmet volunteers were able to escape to Jordan with 324 members of their families, it said in a statement.
But a similar number remain trapped in southern Syria.
“We’re calling on concerned parties to help us leave,” said Cesar, a 23-year-old White Helmets worker in the southern city of Daraa.
He estimated some 400 fellow rescuers were still in the provinces of Daraa, bordering Jordan, and Quneitra, next to the buffer zone abutting the Israeli-annexed Golan.
Cesar said he had learned of the operation a few days ago “by chance”, but when he contacted White Helmets leadership, they told him it was too late to register to leave.
“They set another meeting for today on the subject, but we found out a little while ago that the efforts failed. The fact that some White Helmets members left and some stayed hurt us more than it helped us,” he told AFP on Monday.
“Yesterday’s evacuation through Israel only made things worse. We’re afraid of the regime and Russia’s reactions.”
Russian-backed Syrian forces have been battering the south for more than a month in a bid to bring it back under government control.
The military push has damaged hospitals and civil defence centres, pushing hundreds of thousands to flee towards the Jordanian and Israeli borders, which remained sealed.
The foreign ministry in Damascus slammed the evacuation on Monday, calling it a “criminal operation” and repeating its accusation that the White Helmets were a front for “terrorists”.
Moscow said it was “symbolic that the White Helmets preferred to flee Syria thanks to foreign support, thus revealing their true nature”.
The 422 people evacuated will be allowed to stay in Jordan for three months before being resettled, Amman has said.
On Monday, the White Helmets called on the international community to help those left behind in southern Syria.
“We thank all governments who contributed to the success of this operation to rescue the rescuers, and we ask that they do more to help the hundreds of thousands remaining in southern Syria,” they said.
White Helmets chief Raed Saleh said not all workers had been evacuated because some had not signed up to do so, while “some volunteers were not able to reach the evacuation point”.
He said there were no plans for a second such operation.
“They pulled out the others but can’t get us out?” asked 20-year-old rescuer Imad from a rebel village in Quneitra. “We’re surrounded,” he said.
