JERUSALEM/AMMAN--Hundreds of Syrian "White Helmet" rescue workers and their families fled advancing government forces and slipped over the border into Jordan overnight with the help of Israeli soldiers and Western powers, officials said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a brief video statement on Sunday he had helped the evacuation at the request of U.S. President Donald Trump and other leaders - and there had been fears that the workers' lives were at risk.
The group, known officially as Syria Civil Defence, has been widely hailed in the West and credited with saving thousands of people in rebel-held areas during years of bombing attacks by Damascus and its allies. Its members, known for their white helmets, say they are neutral. But Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his backers, including Russia, have dismissed them as Western-sponsored propaganda tools and proxies of Islamist-led insurgents. There was no immediate response from Damascus on Sunday.
A Jordanian government source said 422 people were brought from Syria, over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights frontier and into Jordan, down from a figure of 800 announced earlier by the foreign ministry in Amman. The evacuees will be kept in a "closed" location in Jordan and resettled in Britain, Germany and Canada within three months, the source said.
A second non-Jordanian source familiar with the agreement said the original plan had been to evacuate 800 people, but only 422 made it out as operations were hampered by government checkpoints and the expansion of Islamic State in the area.
Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman al Safadi was quoted in a foreign ministry statement as saying he had discussed in a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov the details of the mission to bring the rescue workers to Jordan. Syria and its Russian allies have launched an offensive on rebels in the sensitive southwestern border zone.
Netanyahu said Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and others had spoken to him recently asking for help in extracting the White Helmets. "The lives of these people, who have saved lives, were now in danger. I therefore authorised their transfer via Israel to other countries as an important humanitarian gesture," Netanyahu said.
Trump did not mention the operation during a series of tweets on Sunday. The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it welcomed the operation and renewed its call on "the Assad regime and Russia to abide by their commitments, end the violence, and protect all Syrian civilians."
