15 more Pinoys to arrive home from troubled Syria

Fifteen more Filipinos will be arriving home from troubled Syria on Thursday after availing of the government's Mandatory Repatriation Program, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said.

As of Wednesday, the Filipinos were traveling by land from Damascus to Beirut, where they will be transferred across the Lebanese Masna'a border by the Philippine Embassy in Beirut, the DFA said.

All 15 will then board Emirates Airlines flight EK-332 from Dubai on tickets shouldered by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Damascus.

The latest batch will bring the total number of Filipinos repatriated from Syria to 5,546. Of these, 2,517 were repatriated through the Philippine Embassy in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the DFA is urging Filipinos who have relatives in Syria to contact the embassy through the following contact details to provide information of their family member's whereabouts so that they could be given immediate assistance:

-- 00963-11-6132626
-- 00963-949155557
-- 00963-934957926
-- damascuspe@gmail.com

Alert Level 4 is currently raised in Syria due to the violent political situation there. Under this alert level, a total ban on the deployment of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) is imposed, and Filipinos there are ordered to evacuate. —Rie Takumi/KBK, GMA News

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