Nearly 1.5Mln Syrian Citizens Already Returned Home - Russian Military

Fakhir Rizvi Published October 22, 2018 | 06:45 PM

Nearly 1.5 million Syrian citizens have already returned to their homes in the war-torn country, with about 250,000 Syrians having come back from abroad, Russia's National Defense Control Center head Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said on Monday.

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2018) Nearly 1.5 million Syrian citizens have already returned to their homes in the war-torn country, with about 250,000 Syrians having come back from abroad, Russia's National Defense Control Center head Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said on Monday.

"As of today, over 1,490,739 Syrian citizens have returned to the country. At least 1,241,212 of them account for internally displaced persons. Over 249,527 people have returned from abroad," Mizintsev said at a meeting of Russian-Syrian headquarters coordinating the return of refugees.

According to Mizintsev, over the past week, at least 2,659 Syrians have come back home, including 2,520 Syrian citizens who returned from abroad.

"The Syrian government proceeds with the work to improve the legislative framework aimed at promoting the process of refugees' return. On October 9, Syrian President Bashar Assad signed decree ��18 on granting amnesty, which is another considerable step toward removing barriers to refugees' deciding on their return to the homeland," Mizintsev indicated.

Mizintsev pointed out that active work to reconstruct Syria's infrastructure was underway. He specified that 167 residential buildings, a school and two medical facilities had been put into operation over the past week.

"In another 289 settlements the reconstruction works [to rebuild] 180 schools, 160 pre-schools, 156 bakeries, 179 water pumping stations, 161 electrical substations, 153 medical facilities, 1,877 residential buildings and 82 places of worship are continuing," Mizintsev added.

As the Syrian government has regained control over most of the country's territories that were seized by terrorists, it is now focused on creating favorable conditions for repatriating refugees. Moscow is assisting Damascus in this, along with providing humanitarian aid to civilians and being a guarantor of the ceasefire.