AMMAN: Jordan said Monday it has hit the limit of its ability to host Syrian refugees as Washington’s United Nations envoy Nikki Haley visited on her first overseas trip.
“Jordan has reached the limit of its capacity to cope with the burden of hosting Syrian refugees,” Planning Minister Imad Al-Fakhoury said in a statement after meeting Haley.
Syria’s six-year conflict has triggered a vast exodus of refugees, millions of whom are living in neighboring states.
The UN refugee agency says it has registered more than 680,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan.
Amman says it hosts some 1.3 million Syrians at a cost of some $6.6 billion (5.9 billion euros) since the war broke out in 2011.
Jordan says it will need a further $8 billion to cover the costs of hosting refugees until 2018
Haley also met Jordan’s King Abdullah II Monday as part of a trip focused on the plight of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey.
On Sunday she visited Jordan’s Zaatari camp which hosts some 80,000 refugees displaced by the conflict in neighboring Syria.
She tweeted that she wanted to “see first-hand how the Syrian crisis is affecting children.”
Her first field visit comes as UN agencies worry about proposed US funding cuts that could cripple the world body’s humanitarian work.
The State Department says it has donated $6.5 billion in aid since the Syrian conflict began.
But President Donald Trump sparked a global uproar earlier this year by suspending a US resettlement program for refugees from Syria.
Haley said last week that the US administration would continue to support countries on the front line of the refugee crisis.
According to the UN children’s agency UNICEF, 2.3 million Syrian children are living as refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq.
Jordan has ‘hit limit’ hosting Syrian refugees
Jordan has ‘hit limit’ hosting Syrian refugees
Palestinians from West Bank arrive at Israeli checkpoints for first Friday prayers of Ramadan
Palestinian worshippers coming from West Bank cities arrived at Israeli checkpoints on Friday hoping to cross to attend first Friday prayers of Ramadan at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Some said they were not allowed to enter and were asked to go back.
Israeli authorities said they would only allow up to 10,000 Palestinian worshippers from the West Bank to attend prayers at al-Aqsa, as security forces stepped up deployments across the city.
Police said preparations for Ramadan had been completed, with large numbers of officers and border police to be deployed in the Old City, around holy sites and along routes used by worshippers.
Israel's COGAT, a military agency that controls access to the West Bank and Gaza, said that entry to Jerusalem from the West Bank would be capped at 10,000 worshippers. Men aged 55 and over and women aged 50 and over will be eligible to enter, along with children up to age 12 accompanied by a first-degree relative, COGAT said.
Al-Aqsa lies at the heart of Jerusalem's old city. It is Islam's third holiest site and known to Jews as Temple Mount.
