Nearly 31,000 Syrians have returned home since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Turkey’s interior minister said Friday.

Turkey is home to nearly 3 million refugees who fled Syria after the start of the civil war in 2011. The recent fall of Assad’s government has raised hope that Syrian refugees in Turkey and elsewhere may be able to return.

The return of Syrian refugees comes as Turkey says it will look to provide electricity to Syria and help enhance its power infrastructure, Turkey’s energy minister was quoted as saying on Friday.

Assistance for Syria is coming from elsewhere, too.

Some 50 tons of European Union-funded medical supplies that were flown to Turkey through Dubai are expected to enter Syria on Dec. 31, a United Nations health official told Agence France-Presse on Friday.

“The supplies are still in Istanbul and going through the customs process,” Mrinalini Santhanam of the World Health Organization’s Gaziantep office in southern Turkey told AFP.

The goal is to support Syria’s healthcare system, which was pummeled by years of war under Assad.

And Ukraine already has sent its first batch of food aid to Syria, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday. The Ukrainian leader said 500 tons of wheat flour were on their way to Syria.

Meanwhile, Iran’s top diplomat warned Friday against “destructive interference” in Syria’s future, he wrote in Chinese state media as he visited Beijing.

Iran “considers the decision-making about the future of Syria to be the sole responsibility of the people … without destructive interference or foreign imposition,” Abbas Araghchi wrote in a Chinese-language article in the People’s Daily newspaper published on Friday.

Both China and Iran were supporters of the now-deposed Assad.

Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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