50,000 Syrians returned home from Lebanon this year – official

Fifty thousand Syrians have returned home from Lebanon so far in 2018, a top Lebanese official said Tuesday. The number could reach 200,000 in a year’s time if it continues at this rate, according to Abbas Ibrahim, head of Lebanon’s General Security agency. It had organized the return of 25,000 Syrians in coordination with Damascus, and another 25,000 had made their own way home, Reuters reports. Lebanon is hosting 976,000 registered Syrian refugees, according to UN refugee agency UNHCR. The government says the total number of Syrians in the country is around 1.5 million.