AMMAN: Israel has evacuated 800 White Helmets rescuers and their family members threatened by advancing Syrian regime forces to Jordan for resettlement in Britain, Canada and Germany, Amman said Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the operation an "important humanitarian step" and said he ordered it after requests from US President Donald Trump and Canadian premier Justin Trudeau.
Founded in 2013, the Syria Civil Defence, or White Helmets, is a network of first responders which rescues the wounded in the aftermath of air strikes, shelling or explosions in rebel-held territory.
Jordan "authorised the United Nations to organise the passage of 800 Syrian citizens through Jordan to be resettled in western countries," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Kayed said. "The government gave the permission after Britain, Germany and Canada made a legally binding undertaking to resettle them within a specified period of time due to ´a risk to their lives´."
The Israeli military said it had transferred the rescue workers and their families to a neighbouring country, adding the operation was "exceptional" and that Israel would continue its "non-intervention policy" in the Syrian conflict.
"A few days ago President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and others approached me with the request to help extract from Syria hundreds of White Helmets," Netanyahu said in a statement.
"These are people who save lives and now find themselves in deadly danger, therefore I approved bringing them through Israel to another country as an important humanitarian step."
White Helmets head Raed Saleh said the evacuees had arrived in Jordan after being "surrounded in a dangerous region". They had been encircled in the Syrian provinces of Daraa and Quneitra, which respectively border Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, he told AFP.
Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres of the Golan from Syria in 1967, in a move never recognised internationally. Britain's Foreign Office said it had helped facilitate the overnight evacuations.
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