Hundreds of rescuers still stuck in south Syria after evacuation

Several hundred Syrian rescuers remain trapped in the country's south with no escape from approaching regime troops, two of them said today after a secret evacuation saved many of their colleagues.

Israel yesterday helped more than 400 people -- opposition-linked White Helmet rescue workers and their families -- flee a neighbouring pocket of southwestern Syria as government forces bore down on them.

They were then taken to Jordan and will be resettled to western nations including France, Britain, Germany, and Canada.

"It was the only alternative for our trapped volunteers who would otherwise have faced detention or death at the hands of the Syrian regime and its ally Russia," the group said on Monday.

Ninety-eight male and female White Helmet volunteers were able to escape to Jordan with 324 members of their families, it said in a statement.

But a similar number remain trapped in southern Syria.

"We're calling on concerned parties to help us leave," said Cesar, a 23-year-old White Helmets worker in the southern city of Daraa.

He estimated some 400 fellow rescuers were still in the provinces of Daraa, bordering Jordan, and Quneitra, next to the buffer zone abutting the Israeli-annexed Golan.

Cesar said he had learned of the operation a few days ago "by chance", but when he contacted White Helmets leadership, they told him it was too late to register to leave.