UNHCR report says more than 604,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon

  
The UN Higher Council for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Saturday that the number of the displaced Syrians in Lebanon receiving aid from the government, the United Nations and its NGO partners has reached over 604,000 refugees.           

It added that the number of registered refugees has reached at least 517,000 while more than 87,000 are still waiting for their registration process to be completed.
        
It also pointed out that 181,000 displaced Syrians were registered in northern Lebanon, 175,000 in the eastern Bekaa region, 95,000 in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, and 65,000 in southern Lebanon.        

On July 10, Lebanon's UN ambassador said that his country is being overwhelmed by more than a million Syrian refugees who have crossed the border to flee the war.

In this context, the United Nations Security Council issued a statement thanking Lebanon for taking in 587,000 Syrian refugees.           

But Lebanese U.N. Ambassador Nawaf Salam told reporters that many more have come into Lebanon without registering and are staying with friends and families in informal asylum. He put the current total at "a million-plus."           

Lebanon is a country of just 4 million people, so the huge numbers of refugees are politically sensitive in a nation that endured its own civil war in the 1980s.     

The U.N. estimates that a total of 1.7 million Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.            

The Security Council is expected to hold a meeting later this month to draw attention to the strain on Lebanon's resources due to the Syrian war.              


LBCI/AP