UK accepts 1500 asylum seekers from Syria

Britain has accepted about 1,500 asylum seekers from Syria.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told MPs that the UK accepted hundreds upon hundreds of individual asylum seekers from Syria, under international asylum obligations.

According to the BBC, but Amnesty International has criticised Clegg for conflating asylum seekers who have made it to the UK with people in refugee camps in the Middle East.

Amnesty has previously criticised EU countries, including the UK, for not offering a safe haven to more Syrians who have fled to neighbouring countries since March 2011, the report said.

Amnesty said that only 10 EU member states have offered to take in a total of 12,000 refugees, with Germany offering 10,000 places, France 500 and Spain 30.

During Clegg's Commons question session, Labour MP Ian Lucas urged Clegg to 'support the placement of a limited number of the most vulnerable refugees from Syria in the UK', the report added.