Hundreds of members of Syria’s “White Helmet” civil defence group have fled advancing government forces and been spirited over the border into Jordan with the help of Israeli soldiers and Western powers, officials said on Sunday. Israel’s Army said on Twitter that Washington and European governments had asked it to move the White Helmets and their families out of southwest Syria overnight as there was “an immediate threat to their lives”.
The evacuees — who operated in rebel-held areas in Syria and ran an emergency rescue service during years of bombing attacks by Damascus and its allies — will be resettled in Britain, Germany and Canada within three months, a Jordanian government source said.
The source said 422 people were brought from Syria, over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights frontier and into Jordan, down from a figure of 800 announced earlier by the Foreign Ministry in Amman.
German weekly magazine Bild , which broke news of the evacuation, said 50 of them would be granted asylum by Berlin.
