France: number of Syrian asylum seekers rises sharply

French officials said on Tuesday that the number of Syrians seeking asylum in France had risen sharply in 2012 compared with 2011, an illustration of how the internal situation in Syria is worsening. Foreign Ministry sources said that so far in 2012 France had received 281 requests for asylum, including 231 through the Immigration Agency and another 50 through requests for refugee visas. This compares with 100 requests to the Immigration Agency in 2011 and only nine refugee visa requests last year. France has also increased the number of asylum requests it is granting and out of the 231 Immigration Agency requests in 2012 has so far granted 91 percent of them and about 30 percent of the refugee visas. Officials here also indicated that flows of refugees to neighbouring Jordan are at very high levels and there are now almost 34,000 Syrians in the main Zaatari camp in Jordan, where France has established a military-civilian field hospital. A major immunisation program has reached almost 6,000 children and well over four thousand medical consults have been done, in addition to surgery and more serious interventions. France says it has given about 30 million euro's (USD 39 million) in bilateral and European aid to help Syrians affected by the violence.