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Kurds Enter Lebanon at Border Village
WAZZANI, Lebanon, Aug 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Lebanese police detained 10 Iraqi Kurds after they were expelled by Israel following their attempt to enter into Israel from southern Lebanon earlier Thursday, news agencies reported.
The Kurds were detained near the border village of Wazzani where Israeli authorities had left them, security sources said.
Military sources in Israel said 10 Iraqi Kurds, including women and children, slipped into Israel early Thursday from southern Lebanon in a bid for asylum, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"We've been informed by the Israeli army that the Kurds crossed over and that they're going to be sent back," said the spokesman for the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Timur Goksel.
Goksel said 42 Kurds sent back to Lebanon by Israel on August 9th after they entered from Ghajar were still stranded at a nearby border crossing. Lebanese authorities have refused to take in the refugees.
"We're still taking care of them," Goksel said.
The Kurds had crossed near Ghajar, home to 10,000 Islamic Alawites common in neighboring Syria, a flashpoint village straddling both sides of the Israeli and Lebanese border.
This was the latest in a wave of illegal immigrants trying to enter Israel across its northern border.
Since March, 67 Kurds have been caught trying to cross into Israel. The largest attempt occurred in August when 42 Kurds were nabbed crossing into Israel. All have been sent back to Lebanon.
Tens of thousands of Kurds, some of them refugees from Iraq, live in Lebanon.
Kurds, a non-Arab Middle Eastern minority population inhabit a region known as Kurdistan, an extensive plateau and mountain area in southwest Asia, including parts of eastern Turkey, northeastern Iraq, and northwestern Iran, and smaller sections of northeastern Syria and Armenia.
As of the late 1990s, there were estimated to be more than 20 million Kurds, with about half of them residing in Turkey, where, making up more than 23% of the population, they dwell near the Iranian frontier around Lake Van, as well as in the vicinity of Diyarbakir and Erzurum.
The Kurds in Iran, who constitute some 10% of Kurds worldwide, live principally in Azerbaijan and Khorasan, with some in Fars. The Iraqi Kurds, about 23% of its population, live mostly in the vicinity of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Sulaimaniyah.
Ethnically close to Iranians, the Kurds were traditionally nomadic herders but are now mostly semi-nomadic or sedentary. Kurdish dialects belong to the northwestern branch of the Iranian languages. The majority of Kurds are devout Sunni Muslims.
The Kurds have traditionally resisted subjugation by other nations. Despite their lack of political unity, throughout history the Kurds, as individuals and in small groups, have had a lasting impact on developments in southwest Asia. Saladin, who gained fame during the Crusades, is perhaps the most famous of all Kurds.
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