Red Cross Transports 35 Wounded Syrians from Qusayr to Lebanon

The Lebanese Red Cross transported on Sunday around 35 Syrians, who were wounded in the Syrian town of Qusayr, state-run National News Agency reported.

The NNA said that the transfer operations kicked off overnight Saturday.

The wounded people were submitted to al-Menyeh Hospital in the northern city of Tripoli, the news agency added.

The wounded were evacuated as the regime seized the last remaining insurgent bastion in the Qusayr area of central Syria, near the Lebanese border.

Red Cross Operations Director George Kettaneh later told LBCI that 87 wounded people have been transported from Qusayr to Lebanon since Friday in cooperation with the Lebanese army.

Dozens of wounded Syrian rebels and civilians have independently made their way across the frontier into Lebanon after the town of Qusayr, a former rebel stronghold, was taken last Wednesday by Syrian regime forces bolstered by fighters of Hizbullah, security sources said.

Most of them arrived in Arsal, a Sunni majority town in eastern Lebanon which backs the rebellion in Syria, before they were transported to hospitals in Bekaa, while others landed in the village of al-Qasr in northeast Lebanon.

Many of those who fled Qusayr have arrived across the border in extremely poor condition, a local municipality official in Arsal told Agence France Presse.

"Their situation is very bad -- they arrived exhausted. They have nothing. Some came here on foot," said Ahmed al-Hojeiri.

He said a Syrian civilian told him it "took four days to reach Arsal. He was in a state of complete shock. He tried to leave the city with his wife and two children when a shell fell. He lost his family."

Hojeiri said some other Syrian refugees told him "they were eating leaves to survive on the road".

Syrian authorities said on Saturday that government troops had taken control of the entire strategic region of Qusayr, where the U.N. Security Council has called for an "immediate" humanitarian access.