More than 30,000 Syrians returned home since al-Assad’s fall, Turkiye says | Syria’s War News

Nearly 31,000 Syrians have returned to their homes since the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to the interior minister of neighboring Türkiye, which is home to some refugees. 3 million Syrian refugees.

Meanwhile, Syrians gathered inside the country, Friday, on a day to commemorate the victims of the Assad regime and the 13-year civil war.

Millions fled Syria after the war in 2011, but since the fall of Assad on December 8, there is hope that many will return.

“The number of people who have returned [from Turkiye] Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told local news channel TGRT on Friday that “30 percent” of them were born in Türkiye.

Yerlikaya said on Tuesday that more than 25,000 Syrians had returned in statements to the official Anadolu news agency, adding that they would be allowed to leave and return to Turkey three times in the first half of 2025.

He added that Ankara would also open a “migration management office” in Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, where most of the refugees living in Turkey are from, without providing further details. He added that it would reopen its consulate general in Aleppo “within a few days,” echoing statements made by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this week.

The Turkish embassy in Damascus reopened on December 14, six days after Assad’s inauguration He was overthrown By fighters of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.

“I want the truth”

Meanwhile, in the capital, Damascus, and elsewhere, Syrians held a day to commemorate those killed and imprisoned during Assad’s nearly 25-year rule.

Dozens of demonstrators gathered in Hijaz Square in central Damascus to pressure the new authorities over the fate of their relatives who went missing during the Assad era, carrying photos of the disappeared, Agence France-Presse reported.

A black banner raised from the balcony of the elegant Ottoman-era train station read: “It is time to hold tyrants accountable.” Other banners read: “Revealing the fate of missing persons is a right” and “I do not want an unmarked grave for my son, I want the truth.”

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahl al-Barrah said from Damascus that people also gathered in other areas including Umayyad Square.

“I saw many people carrying banners, posters and pictures of their loved ones who were killed or disappeared in prisons during the era of Bashar al-Assad or his father, Hafez al-Assad,” he said.

At one point, Ahlbara described the scenes in the streets as “chaotic,” with people seen celebrating by firing their weapons into the air.

The Syrian prisons were a Main column In supporting the Assad regime. The photos, smuggled out of Syria in 2013, showed what Human Rights Watch said was “compelling evidence of widespread torture, starvation, beatings, and disease in Syrian government detention facilities,” amounting to a crime against humanity, the rights group said.

‘to intervene’

Elsewhere on Friday, Iran’s top diplomat warned against “destructive interference” in Syria’s future, and said decisions should rest solely with the country’s people.

Abbas Araqchi wrote in the People’s Daily newspaper, published by Chinese state media, during a visit to Beijing that Iran “considers that decision-making about the future of Syria is the responsibility of the people alone… without destructive interference or foreign imposition.”

He also stressed Iran’s respect for Syria’s unity, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

Iranian official media reported that Abbas Araqchi arrived in the Chinese capital on Friday afternoon, beginning his first official visit to the country since his appointment as foreign minister. China and Iran were supporters of former President Al-Assad.

On the humanitarian front, a United Nations health official said that about 50 tons of European Union-funded medical supplies are expected to enter Syria by the end of the year.

Mrinalini Santhanam from the WHO office in Gaziantep in southern Turkey told AFP that the supplies, sent from the EU stockpile in Dubai, arrived in Istanbul on Thursday and were scheduled to be transported to the border in the coming days. They will be pushed south and likely cross the border into Syria “on December 31.”

The shipment includes 8,000 emergency surgical kits, anesthesia supplies, intravenous fluids, sterilization materials, and medicines to prevent disease outbreaks, which the European Union said will be sent to support “health care systems in Idlib and northern Aleppo.”

The civil war, which broke out in 2011, has devastated the country and its healthcare system. He said that nearly half of the hospitals in Syria are not functioning.