Britain may be considering taking in as many as 15,000 Syrian refugees as it draws up plans to launch air strikes within a month in the war-torn country where dreaded IS militants have occupied large swathes of land.
Senior government sources told ‘The Sunday Times’ that Prime Minister David Cameron has instructed his aides to draw up plans to expand the vulnerable persons relocation programme under which Britain has taken 216 Syrians from refugee camps. As part of a wider programme, he wants to launch a military and intelligence offensive against the people traffickers, divert foreign aid to the crisis as part of the Whitehall spending review and persuade Opposition Labour MPs to back airstrikes in Syria in a House of Commons vote in early October.
With details of Britain’s refugee resettlement programme being finalised, a figure as high as 20,000 has been discussed in 10 Downing Street (Prime Minister’s official residence), but Cameron’s “current thinking” will see about 15,000 people in refugee camps on the Syrian border resettled in Britain, the newspaper quoted sources as saying.
Cameron has been under tremendous domestic and international pressure to take in more refugees fleeing from the war-ravaged Syria.