250 stranded Palestinians enter Syria from Iraq

TANAF, Syria, May 9 (Reuters) Around 250 Palestinian refugees were allowed into Syria today, ending their six-week ordeal stranded on the Iraqi-Jordanian border after fleeing violence in Baghdad, witnesses said.

The group had been camping in dire conditions in the desert since March 19 at Trebil border point, just inside Iraq, according to the UN refugee agency.

Jordanian authorities, fearful of a large influx from among the 34,000 Palestinian refugees estimated to be living in Iraq, closed the border when 89 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, fled Baghdad to the Jordanian border in a bus.

They were joined by more than 100 more Palestinians over the following weeks.

Syria, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, agreed late last month to take in them in.

The refugees crossed the border at the Tanaf border point in buses, the witnesses said.

REUTERS OM RS1817