TODAY’S MESOP SYRIA INSIGHT : Arab League Leaders Condemn Killing in Syria

The two-day Arab League summit concluded Wednesday in Kuwait with the 22 members stating in a final communique, “We condemn in the strongest terms the massacres and the mass killing committed by the Syrian regime’s forces against the unarmed people.” Meanwhile, the first Syrian refugees arrived in Britain Tuesday as part of the Vulnerable Persons Relocation program.  It is expected that several hundred Syrian refugees will relocate over the next three years under the new program, which immediately grants the rights and benefits of humanitarian protection status, including access to public funds and the labor market.

Approximately 3,800 Syrians have sought asylum in Britain since the conflict began in March 2011. A spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has confirmed that the last trucks of a 78-truck aid convoy crossed the Qamishli border, completing a five-day mission to move humanitarian aid into Syria. In Lebanon, a Syrian mother of four is in critical condition after she set herself on fire Tuesday at a U.N. refugee registration center in Tripoli. Islamist rebel forces have seized control of the seaside village of Samra near the Turkish border, gaining access to the sea for the first time since the conflict began.