DAMASCUS: More than 22,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria this week via two border crossings, Syrian security sources said Thursday, as the Zionist entity pounded Lebanon in a fresh cross-border escalation. “More than 6,000 Lebanese and around 15,000 Syrians” have entered Syria through the Jdeidet Yabus border, also known in Lebanon as Masnaa crossing, said one security source requesting anonymity as they were not authorized 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 Zionist strikes on Lebanon. Lebanon’s health ministry said Thursday that 19 Syrians were among 20 people killed in an overnight Zionist strike in Yunin in the Bekaa valley, after the Zionist military said it hit Hezbollah targets in eastern Lebanon. — AFP

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 Zionist 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 Zionist warplanes targeted a crossing that links Syria’s Qusayr area to Lebanon, reporting “a number of wounded” in “the first (Zionist)” targeting of Syrian territory since the entity began pounding Lebanon this week. — AFP