Jordan says it has struck deal for rescuers and families to be resettled in UK, Canada and Germany

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The UK is willing to offer asylum to some of the 500 members or relatives of the Syrian volunteer civil defence forces known as the White Helmets who have been rescued from Syria and evacuated to Jordan, the Guardian has learned.

The White Helmets and their families were evacuated by Israeli defence forces on Saturday night, crossing from northern Israel into Jordan at three points. The Israelis had initially put the numbers evacuated at 800, but later the figure was revised downwards by James Le Mesurier, a former British Army officer who is considered to have founded the group in Turkey in 2013.

He said on Sunday that 422 people were rescued, including 98 White Helmets. As many as 800 others did not manage to escape or chose not to do so.

Israel deploys border reinforcements as Syrians flee strikes Read more

The Israeli operation was carried out at the request of a number of countries including the UK, the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, said in a joint statement. Evacuation plans were drawn up after discussions at the recent Nato summit.

Writing on Twitter, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “Several days ago President Trump contacted me, as did Canadian prime minister Trudeau and others, and requested that we assist in evacuating hundreds of White Helmets from Syria. These are people who have saved lives and whose lives were in danger. I therefore authorised their transfer via Israel to other countries as an important humanitarian gesture.”

Britain would not confirm reports from Jordan that Germany, Britain and Canada had given a legally binding undertaking to take the refugees within three months, but indicated that the processes established by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) for the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme was expected to be used to identify those White Helmets eligible to come to the UK.

The German interior minister, Horst Seehofer, told Bild newspaper that Germany would take in eight White Helmets members and their families. The move was “an expression of my stance of ensuring humanity and order in migration policy”, he said.

Canada will take in up to 50 White Helmets volunteers and their families, totalling up to 250 people, the country’s public broadcaster CBC said, citing senior officials.

Play Video 0:23 Netanyahu: Trump, Trudeau and others asked me to extract White Helmets - video

Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, said she had “called for global leadership to support and help these heroes” at last week’s Nato summit. Other countries are also expected to make offers.

Jordan had been barring refugees from coming over the border from Syria, even though many were under severe bombardment from a joint Syrian-Russian air and ground offensive.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Syrian refugees fleeing conflict in Deraa province sit near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Photograph: Alaa al-Faqir/Reuters

News of the operation came from the Israeli military, which said that overnight it had completed “a humanitarian effort to rescue members of a Syrian civil organisation and their families ... due to an immediate threat to their lives”.

It said it had acted following an Israeli government directive and at the request of the US and European countries.

On Saturday, Israeli security forces closed down roads in the occupied Golan Heights on the Syrian frontier before the evacuation operation. The refugees were taken into Jordan across three routes.

Jordan has shut its borders, saying its refugee camps are already full with more than 600,000 Palestinian and Syrian registered refugees, as well as hundreds of thousands of unregistered refugees.

The Syrian government began an offensive in June forcing hundreds of displaced people to take shelter on the Israeli-Jordanian border.

The White Helmets have operated in opposition-held areas rescuing civilians from the rubble of airstrikes, but they have been attacked as western agents by Russia since their work has been funded by the UK Foreign Office (FCO) and the White House. Their footage of the impact of air attacks has also shocked the western world, and revealed the often brutal impact of the Syrian air campaign. More than 250 of its volunteers have been killed in attacks.

Members of the White Helmets were thought likely to be targeted by the Syrian army once it regained control of the south-west part of Syria. The Russian embassy in the Netherlands welcomed their departure, accusing them of making fake allegations of chemical weapons attacks.



Defending the exception granted to the White Helmets, Mohammed al-Kayed, a spokesman for Jordan, said their transfer did not put the kingdom under any further obligations. He said the aid workers would remain at a closed location and that Britain, Germany and Canada had agreed to resettle them within three months.

The FCO said the closed location was under the control of the UNHCR.

Justifying the operation, Hunt and Mordaunt said: “The White Helmets have saved over 115,000 lives during the Syrian conflict, at great risk to their own. Many White Helmets volunteers have also been killed while doing their work – trying to rescue civilians trapped in bombarded buildings or providing first aid to injured civilians. White Helmets have been the target of attacks and, due to their high profile, we judged that, in these particular circumstances, the volunteers required immediate protection. We therefore took steps with the aim of affording that protection to as many of the volunteers and their families as possible.

“We pay tribute to the brave and selfless work that White Helmets volunteers have done to save Syrians on all sides of the conflict.”





Timeline The Syrian war Show Hide Unprecedented protests demand civil liberties and the release of political prisoners after four decades of repressive rule by the Assad family. The regime represses demonstrations in Damascus and the southern city of Deraa but protests continue. Defecting army colonel Riad al-Asaad sets up the Turkey-based rebel Free Syrian Army. Islamist groups join the revolt. Regime forces take control of the rebel stronghold in Homs after a month of bombardment. Other bloody operations are carried out, notably in the central city of Hama, after massive anti-regime protests. More than 1,400 people die in a chemical weapon attack on rebel-held districts near Damascus. The US and Assad ally Russia agree a plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, averting punitive US strikes against the regime. Hostilities between jihadists and rebel groups turn into an open war in the north. The group that will become known as Islamic State takes Raqqa – the first provincial capital to fall out of regime control – from rebel forces. A US-led coalition launches airstrikes against Isis in Syria. The strikes benefit Kurdish groups, which since 2013 have run autonomous administrations in Kurdish-majority areas. Russia launches airstrikes in support of Assad's troops, who are on the back foot. Russian firepower helps turn the tables for the regime, which begins to retake rebel-held territory. The regime retakes Syria's second city, Aleppo. Russia and Iran, as backers of the Syrian regime, and Turkey, a supporter of the rebels, organise talks in Kazakhstan, between representatives of both sides. The process leads to the creation of four "de-escalation zones". A sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun kills more than 80 people, prompting Washington to attack a regime airbase. Further complicating an already drawn-out conflict, Turkey launches an operation against the Kurdish People's Protection Units which, with US support, played a key role in beating back Isis. Regime launches a ferocious assault on the remaining rebel-held enclave near Damascus, eastern Ghouta. In under four weeks, the Russian-backed onslaught kills more than 1,200 civilians.

US president Donald Trump surprises advisors and allies alike by declaring victory over the Islamic State and promising to withdraw US troops from the conflict. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announce that they have driven Isis out of their final stronghold of Baghuz. At least 11,000 SDF fighters, a Kurdish-led militia which includes Arab, Syriac and Turkmen units, have died in the four-year military campaign against the group in Syria. Britain and France agree to deploy additional special forces in Syria to allow the US to withdraw its ground troops from the fight against remaining Isis forces in the country. Rebels withdraw from Khan Sheikhun in north-west Syria, clearing the way for pro-government forces to enter the town – a key moment in the war for Idlib province, the country’s last major rebel stronghold.

Since the White Helmets’ formation at a time when Syria’s conflict was nearing its third year, more than 200 of its volunteers have died and another 500 have been wounded. Some members have received training abroad, including in Turkey, returning to instruct colleagues on search and rescue techniques.

The group receives funding from a number of governments, including Britain, Germany and the US, but also solicits individual donations to purchase equipment such as its signature white hard hats.

The Syrian government and its ally Russia have called the White Helmets terrorists, and have accused them of being agents of foreign powers and of cooperating with radical insurgent groups. Both Moscow and Damascus have also accused the White Helmets of staging rescue missions and chemical attacks to blame on the government.

State media said on Sunday the fact that Israel, with which Syria is formally at war, had facilitated the evacuation was evidence of the group’s collaboration with an enemy power. Al-Ikhbariya, a Syrian state TV channel, called the evacuation a scandal, and the state news agency SANA said “the secret” of the group had been revealed and its “role as an agent ended”.

The Syrian MP Khaled Abboud said that foreign powers “were pulling their agents out of the battlefield” because of the Syrian military victories that had quashed aggression against the country.

The evacuation was the first such Israeli intervention in Syria’s lengthy civil war, now in its eighth year. Although it has sent aid into the country and provided medical treatment to thousands of Syrians who reached the Golan Heights frontier, the Israeli military said its actions did not reflect a change in Israel’s official non-intervention policy in Syria’s war, where all parties to the conflict are considered hostile.

Its forces have also on occasion conducted military strikes within Syria.

Israel seized 460 sq miles (1,200 sq km) of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 during the six-day war and later annexed it, a move that has never been recognised internationally.

Syrian forces launched a Russia-backed offensive to retake Deraa and Quneitra provinces from rebels on 19 June. A month later, government institutions look set to return to most of the two provinces through a combination of bombardment and surrenders brokered by Moscow.

The deals provide for rebels to hand over their heavy weapons and those who disagree with a government takeover to be bussed with family members towards opposition-held areas in the north of the country.

Jihadists are not party to the deals and Russian planes bombarded a holdout of Islamic State in Deraa province overnight, a UK-based war monitor said.

More than 20,000 civilians have fled to government-held areas to escape the bombardment of the Isis-held area on the border with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in the past 24 hours, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report