850,000 Syrian refugees have returned home since Assad’s fall: UNHCR

A senior official at the UN Refugee Agency said Monday that around 850,000 Syrian refugees have returned to their homes from neighboring countries since the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime in December, and that the number could reach one million in the coming weeks.

Kelly T. Clements, the Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, told the Associated Press in Damascus that about 1.7 million people displaced inside Syria during the 14-year conflict have also gone back to their communities as the temporary central government took control of large parts of the country.

“This is a dynamic period. It is an opportunity to see possible solutions to the largest global displacement we have seen in the past 14 years,” said Clements, who spent three days in Syria.

The Syrian war, which began in March 2011, has killed nearly half a million people and displaced about half of the country’s 23 million prewar population. More than five million Syrians fled abroad, most of them to neighboring states.

Clements said that each person has different reasons for returning now, while others are postponing their return to see how the situation develops.

As part of her visit, she went to a border crossing with Lebanon, where she said she saw long lines of trucks and people waiting to return to Syria.

Lebanese authorities have granted an exemption to Syrians living illegally in Lebanon if they left before the end of August. Lebanon, which hosts the world’s highest number of refugees per capita, has seen thousands of Syrians cross back in recent days.

“The numbers of returnees are exceptionally high,” Clements said.