Syrian refugees return from Lebanon
BEIRUT -- Hundreds of Syrian refugees have headed home in the first batch to leave Lebanon since protests over government corruption and the influx of refugees broke out in the small Arab country a month ago.
Since the early hours of Tuesday, scores of Syrians had boarded buses in several locations in Lebanon before heading back to their hometowns in war-torn Syria.
Vanessa Moya of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees agency said some 225 Syrian refugees were scheduled to head back to Syria, raising the number to about 27,000 refugees who have gone back to Syria over the past two years.
Thousands of Syrians have gone home from Lebanon since June 2018 as calm returns to parts of Syria.
Lebanon is hosting some 1 million Syrian refugees who fled their country after the war broke out eight years ago.
U.S. sends 3 migrants to Guatemala
GUATEMALA CITY -- Three Central Americans who arrived in the United States intending to seek asylum were sent to Guatemala on Tuesday under a July agreement between the two countries that makes Guatemala a so-called safe third country.
Guatemala's migration agency confirmed the arrivals of two Hondurans and a Salvadoran. Spokeswoman Alejandra Mena said a plane had departed from Mesa, Ariz., the second flight to carry Central Americans to Guatemala under the agreement.
Eighty-four Guatemalans were also on board.
Leonel Dubon, director of the nongovernmental organization Refugio de la Ninez, Spanish for "childhood refuge," said the group was providing the Central Americans with legal advice. Two said they were afraid to return home out of concerns for their safety, according to Dubon.
He said that the Central Americans told him they had requested asylum in the United States and that they were transferred under the July agreement.
Close tent camp, official says in Bosnia
BIHAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- A top European human-rights official on Tuesday demanded the immediate closure of a makeshift tent camp in northwestern Bosnia where hundreds of migrants remain stranded despite snow and freezing weather.
"It should be closed as we speak," Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic said while visiting the Vucjak camp near the town of Bihac. "This is not a place for human beings."
The Vucjak camp has almost no facilities. International aid organizations have repeatedly warned it is unfit for migrants because it is located on a former landfill and is close to a minefield from a 1992-95 war.
Already poor conditions in Vucjak have worsened further after snow fell on Monday. Several hundred migrants who were staying in the camp on Tuesday refused food and water to protest the situation.
Fazil Rahman, who's from Afghanistan, said migrants "don't want the food"; they just want to be allowed to cross into neighboring Croatia and move on toward Western Europe, where they hope to start new lives.
Migrants go into Bosnia from neighboring Serbia or Montenegro. Most of them have flocked to the northwestern corner of the Balkan country, which borders European Union member state Croatia.
Bosnian authorities have struggled to accommodate thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Government officials have said that a new facility for migrants near Sarajevo won't be ready for another 20 days.
4 killed as typhoon lashes Philippines
MANILA, Philippines -- Typhoon Kammuri barreled across the Philippines with fierce winds and rain Tuesday, leaving at least four people dead, forcing hundreds of thousands of villagers to abandon high-risk communities and prompting officials to shut Manila's international airport.
Kammuri toppled trees and electrical posts, ripped off tin roofs and battered a provincial airport as it blew across island provinces in the southern fringes of northern Luzon island before blowing into the South China Sea. It weakened but remained dangerous, with maximum sustained winds of 81 mph and gusts of up to 124 mph as it exited, forecasters said.
At least four people died and several others were injured, with officials attributing the low casualty figure to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of villagers from areas prone to high waves, flash floods and landslides.
A villager was electrocuted while fixing the roof of his house in Libmanan town in Camarines Sur province in the hard-hit Bicol region, regional disaster response officer Claudio Yucot said. In Oriental Mindoro, a man died after being pinned by a fallen tree and another perished after being hit by a tin roof, Gov. Humerlito Dolor said.
A construction worker on his way home on a motorcycle was hit by a falling tree and died in the port city of Ormoc in Leyte province, police said.
A Section on 12/04/2019