Syrian government condemns 'criminal' evacuation of White Helmets rescuers

Hundreds of the first responders were escorted to Jordan in a huge and complex operation over the weekend

An Israeli soldier hands out water on a bus to Syrians during a rescue operation to extract White Helmets (Reuters)

​The Syrian government has said the evacuation of hundreds of White Helmets rescue workers from the country’s south was a “criminal operation” undertaken by “Israel and its tools”.

Around 400 of the first responders were allowed to cross into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and then to Jordan in a huge and complex weekend operation hindered by Syrian government forces, Russian bombing and Isis’s expansion in the area.

The evacuees will be resettled in the UK, Germany and Canada over the next three months.

The UK and US were among the world powers that asked Israel to help with the unusual rescue mission, citing threats to the rescue workers’ lives in Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s month-long offensive to retake the southern province of Deraa from rebel forces.

The Syrian army and allied militias have made quick progress across the area with the help of airstrikes by the allied Russian air force. At the peak of the violence, 320,000 people were displaced from their homes, and thousands remain camped out in desert conditions on the Jordanian and Israeli frontiers.

The operation to rescue the rescuers is the first of its kind.

As the Syrian government has regained ground in the last two years, people living in previously opposition-held areas – medical and charity workers included – have been given the option of safe passage to rebel-controlled Idlib province in Syria’s north.

Deraa’s proximity to Israel and Jordan, however, is believed to have made it much easier to facilitate the evacuation.

Unlike Syria’s other neighbours, Israel has not taken in any refugees from the country’s brutal complex war, although it has provided medical assistance for both fighters and civilians near its borders.

The White Helmets, also known as the Syrian Civil Defence Forces, is a partly western-funded alliance of first responders who operate in rebel-held parts of the country, where normal medical services have often collapsed.

Mr Assad and his allies frequently accuse the group of staging bombings, including chemical weapons attacks, and of links to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.

The decision to only evacuate White Helmets workers has puzzled some Syrians left behind.

“Why only them?” a Syrian working for an NGO over the border in Jordan said over WhatsApp.

“Some people I know are now in Jordan and safe. Everyone else, other NGO workers, have been taken to Idlib by bus, like everyone else. That’s the difference between life and death.”

Syria’s war, now in its eighth year, has killed more than 500,000 people and driven more than half of the pre-war population of 22 million people from their homes.