Refugees from Syria in the Dark over their Future

August 02, 2012: Refugees from Syria are in "complete darkness" about their future, said an official with Caritas Lebanon, the Catholic News Service reports. Father Simon Faddoul, president of Caritas Lebanon, which has been working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon for 14 months, said there was a large influx of people during the last week of July as more than 20,000 refugees fled violence in Damascus and Homs.

"The situation we are in at the moment is terrible. What tomorrow will bring? Unfortunately, we estimate a worse situation," he told CNS. "The human plight and wound in this part of the world is getting deeper."

A Catholic Relief Services staff member chronicling the stories of refugees in border communities in Jordan and Lebanon found people fraught with concern for relatives and friends left behind as they were forced to flee the escalating violence with little advance notice. "People are feeling generally broken and that they might not ever become whole again," Caroline Brennan, senior communications officer for CRS, said in a telephone interview from Beirut on Tuesday.

"The underlying feeling among Syrian refugees is this genuine deep despair for everything that is lost," Brennan said. "They really were blinded by this happening to them. They did not expect this."

Meanwhile, Syrian government forces launched two operations in Damascus to root out rebel activists on Wednesday, killing at least 70, the opposition has said. Troops reportedly went from house to house demanding to see people's papers, and summarily executed many of their victims, according to activists.

A UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said pro-Assad forces arrested about 100 people and tortured them. "On Thursday morning after the operation the bodies of 43 people were recovered. Some of them had been summarily executed," the organisation said in a statement. Other activist groups gave higher figures for the number of deaths.

Activists estimate some 20,000 people have died since anti-government protests erupted in March last year.