MOSCOW(Sputnik) – Lebanon is no longer taking in refugees and will only be able to accept residents of Iraqi Mosul where a military offensive is currently underway only under exceptional circumstances, Lebanese Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said Monday.
"No possibility for the entrance of new displaced people into Lebanon after the military operations in Mosul as the Lebanese government's decision is quite clear in banning the entrance except in extraordinary humanitarian cases," Machnouk said at a meeting with Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees at UNHCR, Kelly Clements, as quoted by the country’s official NNA news agency.
According to the European Commission, Lebanon is hosting around 1.1 million Syrian refugees, 42,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria, 6,000 Iraqi refugees and nearly 450,000 refugees from Palestine. The country has the highest per-capita concentration of refugees worldwide.
