France sends military medics to help Syria refugees

An A310 airliner carrying a French military medical team destined to help refugees on the Joranian-Syrian border took off from Paris on Thursday. With around 25 medical and 25 logistics staff on board, the plane was to stop off in Istres on France's Mediterranean coast to pick up 20 tonnes of medical aid before flying to Amman. "We're expecting a difficult mission, complicated because it's unknown. At a technical level, we have the know-how," head doctor Gerard Dosseh told journalists in Paris. "We will have to adapt ourselves to new situations every day," Dosseh said, adding that the team should be operational "at the end of the week." The medical team can carry out up to 10 operations a day and hospitalise up to 20 patients. President Francois Hollande's office announced the deployment on Monday saying the decision was made with the full consent of the Jordanian authorities. Several hundred thousand Syrian refugees have sought shelter in neighbouring countries, including 120,000 who are registered with the United Nations refugee agency. Many more Syrians are internally displaced. The main opposition coalition, the Syrian National Council, has urged supporters to provide aid to networks of local activists, saying such assistance is otherwise being diverted by President Bashar al-Assad's regime. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is to visit Jordan on August 15.