Jordan Live Blog

1 week 4 days ago - Amman

About 20,000 Syrians have fled to neighbouring Jordan in the past two months, a prominent local charity said on Sunday, urging wealthy Arab countries to help the refugees.

"Around 20,000 Syrian refugees have fled to Jordan in April and March," Zayed Hammad, head of the Ketab and Sunna Society, told AFP. "The society is now taking care of 40,000 Syrian refugees, most of them in Amman."

Hammad said Libyan charities had sent 14 trucks laden with supplies to help his organisation provide aid to the Syrians.

"We will start Monday distributing these supplies. Donors should help us deal with this responsibility. Wealthy Arab countries with money and oil should help their Syrian brothers."

The United States said Thursday it was providing $40m in humanitarian aid to help 65,070 Syrian refugees who have fled to neighbouring states due to the crackdown by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime on a 14-month uprising against his rule.

According to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 15,999 Syrian refugees are registered in Jordan.

But Amman says more than 100,000 Syrians have sought refuge in the kingdom since the March 2011 outbreak of the uprising, in which monitors say more than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died.

Tags Jordan, refugees, syria
4 weeks 4 days ago - Syria

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Sunday cash-strapped Jordan needs help to cope with hosting tens of thousands of Syrians who have fled the unrest in their country to the neighbouring kingdom.

"Jordan has always been generous to refugees. Neighbouring and other friendly countries should help the kingdom cope with the Syrian refugees," UNHCR representative in Jordan, Andrew Harper, told Prime Minister Awan Khasawneh at a meeting.

"The UNHCR is working with other international bodies to aid Jordan and help the government register the Syrian refugees," the state-run Petra news agency quoted Harper as saying.

The UN agency said on Thursday the number of registered Syrians in Jordan reached around 12,500 this month, adding that they are expected to rise.

"The Jordanian government and UNHCR believe there are tens of thousands of vulnerable Syrians in the country," it said. [AFP]

Tags Bashar al Assad, Jordan, Syria protests, UNHCR, United Nations
6 weeks 4 days ago - Jordan

Jordan's King Abdullah II on Sunday reiterated calls to find a political solution in Syria and avoid more bloodshed in the neighbouring country, where thousands have been killed in violence.

"Jordan believes in finding a solution to the Syrian crisis in line with  Arab consensus and believes in supporting (peace envoy) Kofi Annan," a palace statement quoted the king as telling a US congressional delegation.

"More bloodshed and violence should be avoided in Syria."

Annan said on Sunday he was "shocked" by mounting violence in Syria ahead of a UN Security Council deadline for regime forces to cease fire.

Jordanian officials say around 95,000 Syrians have fled to the kingdom since last year.

Tags Amman, King Abdullah II, Kofi Annan, syria
7 weeks 6 days ago - Jordan

Thousands of Palestinians and Jordanians join together in a rally near the Jordanian side of the border to makr Land Day. [Reuters]

Tags Global March to Jerusalem, Land Day, Palestinians
7 weeks 6 days ago - Jordan

More than 15,000 people in Jordan, including opposition Islamists and trade unionists, held a peaceful sit-in near the border with Israel on Friday to mark Land Day.

Waving Jordanian and Palestinian flags, the demonstrators carried banners reading: "Freedom for Jerusalem and freedo for Palestine," and "Jerusalem, here we come," as they gathered in Kafrein, some 10 kilometres from the border crossing and barely a kilometre and a half from the frontier.

- Agence France Presse

Tags Kafrein, Land Day, Palestinians
8 weeks 1 day ago - Jordan

There are reports that 300-600 Syrians fled from Deraa to Ramtha, in Jordan, last night.

All the refugees were said to have entered illegally by crossing through the border fence, and most are now in government custody. Any Syrians crossing into Jordan illegally must hand in their passports and IDs to the local authorities and stay in buildings heavily guarded by police.

Tags Deraa, Ramtha, refugees, syria
8 weeks 4 days ago - Syria

A Jordanian police official says 10 defectors from the Syrian security forces have been arrested on suspicion of spying on refugees and dissidents for President Bashar al-Assad's embattled regime.

The official says the 10 have been living in a compound run and guarded by Jordanian police in Mafraq, near the Syrian border. He says the men fled from the compound last Thursday but were arrested the same day.

He says the men were all low-ranking army and police deserters who escaped to Jordan during the Syrian uprising. They claimed they fled because they opposed the Syrian regime's alleged torture of civilians.

Jordan hosts an estimated 80,000 Syrian refugees.

The official insisted on anonymity, saying on Sunday that public comment could undermine the ongoing investigation. [AP]

Tags Jordan
10 weeks 2 days ago - Syria

File 60136

Jordan's opposition Islamists on Tuesday accused Syria's regime of "genocide," urging Arab League action to stop the killing, in which thousands have died since last March.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm the Islamic Action Front said in a joint statement:

Genocide is being committed in Syria, similar to the 1982 Hama massacre, in which the same regime killed more than 40,000 Syrians.

"The Arab League is hesitant about taking action under Russian and Chinese vetoes as well as Western hypocrisy. This has given the green light to the Syrian regime to maintain its crimes.

"The Syrian people are being betrayed by Arabs, Muslims and the entire world."


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Tags Jordan, Muslim Brotherhood
10 weeks 5 days ago - Syria

The violence in Syria has forced around 80,000 civilians to flee to neighbouring Jordan. Most are farmers who used to cross the border to earn extra income from seasonal agricultural work.

Now, a community of Syrian bedouin have set up a tent village in Jordan's Karak province with plans to stay with their families until the bloodshed back home ends.

Tags Bedouin, Jordan, refugees
11 weeks 4 days ago - Syria
Heavy fighting broke out overnight between armoured forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and opposition fighters who launched coordinated attacks on army roadblocks across the southern city of Deraa on the border with Jordan, activists said on Monday. 
 
The reports of the fighting in Deraa, where the uprising against Assad's rule began last March, could not be independently verified. 
 
But opposition sources say rebels loosely organised under the Free Syrian Army banner have intensified assaults on loyalist targets in southern, north and eastern Syria in the last few days to relieve pressure in the city of Homs, where troops overran the rebel district of Bab Amr last week.  
 
"The Free Syrian Army attacked several roadblocks and street fortifications simultaneously. Tanks are responding by firing 14 mm anti-aircraft guns into residential neighbourhoods and army snipers are shooting at everything that moves, even nylon bags," Maher Abdelhaq, one of the activists, told Reuters from Deraa. 
 
"About 20 buses carrying troops were seen heading from the football stadium in the north to the southern sector the city on the border (with Jordan)," he added. 
 
An army offensive last April put down large demonstrations in Deraa, which had been provoked by the arrest of several women activists and the detention of schoolboys who had written freedom slogans on walls, inspired by Arab Spring revolts in other countries. 
 
Tanks stormed Deraa again in mid-February to stamp out Free Syrian Army rebels in the city and remained deployed there, residents and opposition activists said. 
 
[Source: Reuters]
Tags Deraa, Free Syrian Army, Jordan

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