U.N.:480 Palestinian Refugees Fled Syria to Jordan

The United Nations said on Sunday that 480 Palestinian refugees have fled Syria to Jordan since the start of a revolt against President Bashar Assad's regime last year.

"The U.N. Relief and Works Agency have registered 480 Palestinian refugees who have sought refuge in Jordan since the beginning of the crisis in Syria," UNRWA spokeswoman, Anwar Abu Sakina, told AFP.

"We know that there are more Palestinian refugees from Syria. Depending on their situation, some of the registered refugees get a one-time payment of between $300 to $900, while others receive cash and in-kind aid every three months."

Abu Sakina added that "half of those refugees live now in the northern governorate of Irbid."

"There are 116 people in a guesthouse near the border town of Ramtha. The rest are in Amman and Zarqa, northeast of the capital," she said.

"To my knowledge, only those who illegally entered Jordan from Syria are kept in the guesthouse."

UNRWA cares for about five million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, more than two million of them in Jordan and around 475,000 in Syria.

According to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 15,999 Syrian refugees are registered in Jordan.

But Amman says more than 100,000 Syrians have sought refuge in the kingdom since the March 2011 outbreak of the uprising, in which monitors say more than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died.