62 refugees arrive via humanitarian corridor from Beirut

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 1 - A group of 62 Syrian refugees including 25 minors arrived in Italy on Friday on a humanitarian corridor from Lebanon.
    The group arrived at Rome's Fiumicino airport on a flight from Beirut, organised under the programme that since 2016 has brought more than 2,700 refugees to Italy from the Land of the Cedars alone.
    A second group of 18 Syrian refugees is due to arrive from Lebanese capital on Wednesday.
    The Humanitarian Corridors initiative is promoted by the Community of Saint Egidio, the Italian Federation of Evangelical Churches, Caritas and the Waldensian Table, in cooperation with the interior and foreign ministries and with the support of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
    Overall more than 6,700 refugees have arrived in Europe in safety and dignity from Lebanon, Ethiopia, and other countries of first asylum since the project started in the wake of the migrant boat shipwrecks off Lampedusa of October 2013 in which hundreds of refugees mostly from Eritrea and Syria died.
    The new arrivals will be hosted by relatives already living in Italy having arrived through earlier corridors, Italian families and local associations, and will receive support with their integration in Italy.
    "The humanitarian corridors have today become peace corridors," said the Community of Saint Egidio President Marco Impagliazzo.
    "These are people who have been freed not only from the war in Syria, which is behind them, but also from the great destabilisation of Lebanon where they have been living in refugee camps for many years," he continued. (ANSA).