Syrian refugees who have trekked across the desert fleeing expanding Russian air strikes are receiving a less-than-warm welcome in Jordan, which is keeping them penned up miles from anywhere on the grounds some of them may be militants. Some 17,000 Syrians are now stranded in a de facto no-man's land at the only crossing where Jordan still receives refugees, in sparsely populated desert where the borders of Syria, Jordan and Iraq meet some 330 km (200 miles) north-east of Amman.
Abu Talaat Nejm, among a handful of refugees allowed in last week, said he fled with his wife and four children from Islamic State-held Qaryatain, a town in the desert east of Homs that the Syrian government and its allies are trying to recapture.
"I fled for safety with my children from the raids," he told Reuters during a media visit to the area organised by the Jordanian army. "I don't understand why they have to shell markets and homes and kill innocent people."
Human Rights Watch (HRW) published satellite imagery of the areas last June showing hundreds of people already crowded at the border. It said those let in were then forcibly deported back to Syria.
But the situation has become much worse since Russia started air strikes on September 30 in its effort to support President Bashar al-Assad, at first concentrated on the north and since December expanded toward Islamic State-held areas in central and eastern Syria.
"When Russia entered the crisis there was a much bigger inflow of refugees and wounded," Brigadier General Saber al-Mahayreh, commander of Jordan's Border Guard, told reporters on the visit.
Part of the US-led coalition that is bombing Syria, Jordan has long been praised for helping refugees and been a big beneficiary of foreign aid as a result.
But it is now drawing criticism from Western allies as well as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other aid agencies for over the situation at Hadalat.
The UNHCR in December said Jordan should accept the refugees and move them on to established camps closer to the capital, Amman. US President Barack Obama raised the issue with King Abdullah last year.
But Jordan, which has already accepted more than 600,000 UN registered Syrian refugees, is resisting and says it believes that Islamic State militants may have infiltrated their ranks.
"Security for me is the most important thing," Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani told reporters.
The crossing at Hadalat, a military zone far from any inhabited area in either Syria or Jordan, is a three-kilometre (two-mile) stretch of berms built a decade ago to combat smuggling. The rest of the border is heavily guarded by patrols and drones.
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