40,000 Syrians Return Home from Turkiye after Quake

A Turkish official said about 40,000 Syrians have fled from the areas affected by the Feb. 6 earthquake in Turkiye to northwestern Syria, after Ankara eased restrictions imposed on their movements.

"The Syrians entered through four border crossings controlled by Syrian armed groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad," a media official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkiye.

He presented statistics stating that nearly 13,500 Syrians entered through the Bab al-Hawa crossing, nearly 10,000 through the Jarabulus crossing, and about 7,000 through the Bab al-Salam and Tell Abyad crossings, until Monday.

An official at the Turkish Ministry of Defense confirmed that the number of Syrians who returned to their country reached 40,000 as of Monday, adding that the number is increasing daily.

The restrictions imposed by Turkiye in April of last year prevented Syrians from benefiting from temporary protection from visiting Syria and returning to Turkish territory again in an attempt to encourage them to return to their homeland.

Turkiye hosts about 3.5 million Syrian refugees, and the Turks have begun to express their discontent with the presence of refugees on their lands.