Ibrahim: More Refugees Will Be Willingly Returning to Syria

General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim affirmed that more Syrian refugees will be “voluntarily” returning back to their country after several hundreds left the Lebanese border town of Arsal to return home a day earlier, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Friday.

“Further voluntary repatriation of syrian refugees will follow,” in the future, he told the daily, pointing out that some logistical difficulties have delayed the return of others and that the problem will be solved in the future.

“Those who could not return (on Thursday) was because of logistical obstacles. They will return at the earliest opportunity,” he said, explaining that they did not get to the location where the buses have gathered.

Referring to the statements made by the UNHCR representative in Lebanon Mireille Girard that “90 per cent of the refugees are willing to go back home,” he said “this desire proves that they are willingly returning home which will facilitate the mission of the General Security and refugees alike.”

Hundreds of refugees left Arsal on Thursday to return home, as part of a coordinated operation between authorities in Beirut and Damascus.

As fighting fronts in some parts of Syria have died down, Lebanese authorities have become increasingly insistent on returns, more of which are expected in the coming weeks.

Arsal hosts some 36,000 displaced Syrians according to the United Nations refugee agency, many of them from Syrian villages just across the border.

Around 370 left Arsal on Thursday afternoon for Syrian territory under an agreement reached between Lebanon's General Security and Syrian authorities, said the Lebanese National News Agency.

They gathered at the arid Lebanese-Syrian border before moving together in a convoy across the frontier. Syrian state media confirmed they had begun arriving into Syrian territory.

Lebanese authorities had presented to Damascus a list of 3,000 people who wanted to return, of whom just 450 were approved, NNA said.

The UNHCR said the refugee agency had a team on the ground but was not involved in the operations, their spokeswoman said.

"Our position hasn't changed. We haven't organised returns and we did not organise this one," said Lisa Abou Khaled.

UN teams in Syria have requested access from Damascus to reach the towns and villages to which refugees would be returning, most of them in the Qalamun region, but had yet to receive permission, she told AFP.

Lebanon hosts nearly a million registered Syrian refugees but authorities estimate the real number is higher.

Officials have been increasingly calling for refugee returns with or without a political solution to Syria's seven-year-old conflict.

Earlier this year, around 500 refugees left southern Lebanon for Syria in a return organised by both Lebanese and Syrian authorities.

Several thousand have independently gone back to their homeland from towns around the border in recent years.

Lebanese officials have stressed that they are not forcing returns, and that refugees are doing so voluntarily.

Syrians began seeking refuge in Arsal early in their country's war, setting up tents along the border and renting homes in the town itself.

In 2014, jihadists overran Arsal and clashed with Lebanese security forces, kidnapping 30 of them and subsequently killing four.