About 100,000 Syrians return home since Assad’s ouster: UN

Approximately 100,000 refugees have returned to Syria from neighboring countries since opposition fighters overthrew Syria’s strongman Bashar al-Assad, the head of the U.N. migration agency estimated on Dec. 18.

Amy Pope, the director-general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said that Syria’s new leaders “recognize the job they have ahead of them is enormous and that they need the support of the international community.”

IOM estimated about 100,000 people — many looking to return to their former homes — have entered Syria from neighboring countries since Dec. 8, the day former Assad fled the country as the rebels swarmed into the capital.

“We are also seeing about 85,000 people come out” into Lebanon through established border crossing points, she said. “It’s a rough figure: There’s certainly people who cross informally and so they’re not counted.”

Most of those found to be leaving are Shiite Muslims, she said. The armed groups who took control of Syria are primarily from the country’s majority Sunni Muslim community, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

The head of the U.N. migration agency said she was reassured by commitments she heard from Syria’s new caretaker government in meetings in Damascus.

IOM said Pope was one of the first heads of a U.N. agency to visit Syria since Assad’s ouster, and she met with unspecified members of the caretaker government.

The U.N. refugee agency estimated that nearly 1 million individuals will return to Syria between January and June of 2025.

Hosting the largets number of Syiran refugees, Türkiye has recently expanded its border crossing capacities to accommodate the surge in those seeking to return home.

More than 7,600 Syrian migrants crossed the Turkish border to return home in the five days after the fall of the regime, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on Dec. 15.

With the country gradually embracing for normalcy, the first commercial flight since the ouster of Assad took off from Damascus airport on Wednesday, offering Syrians a glimmer of hope after years of war and decades of oppression.

Some 43 people were aboard the flight from Damascus to Aleppo.

Earlier this week, airport staff painted the three-star independence flag on planes, a symbol of the 2011 uprising now adopted by the transitional authorities.

In the terminal, the new flag also replaced the one linked to Assad's era. The joy sparked by Assad's departure has not put an end to the woes of a country wracked by years of civil war and which has become heavily dependent on aid.