Syrian children hitch a ride on a water tanker at the Zaatari Refugee Camp on Tuesday (Reuters photo by Muhammad Hamed)

AMMAN/MAFRAQ — Nearly 9,000 Syrian refugees left the Kingdom for home this month, bringing the number of returnees to more than 68,000 in the past two years, a government official said Tuesday.

“Some 8,974 Syrian refugees voluntarily returned to their country in June, mostly from the northern refugee camp of Zaatari,” Anmar Hmoud, the government spokesperson for Syrian refugee affairs, told Agence France-Presse.

“This brings the total number of those who returned in the past two years to 68,373 people.”

But Hmoud said refugees are still streaming across the border to Jordan.

“More refugees continue to flee to Jordan. Around 12,200 Syrians sought refuge in Jordan this month,” he added, according to AFP.

The Jordan Armed Forces (JAF) said some 500 Syrians crossed into the Kingdom on Tuesday, with around 250 returning to their homeland.

On the ground, violence intensified across southern Syria for the fifth straight day, closing off main access routes to Jordan and reportedly stranding hundreds of displaced Syrians.

“As of today all routes in and out of southern Syria are closed,” Mohammad Al Hourani said from his village of Itlaa in Syria, which saw heavy fighting between regime and rebel forces on Tuesday.

“Anyone attempting to leave their house either faces regime missiles or Hizbollah fighters,” he claimed.

Jordan is currently hosting more than 560,000 Syrian refugees, over 150,000 of whom are housed at the Zaatari Refugee Camp, near the border city of Mafraq, 80km northeast of Amman.

In April, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported that more Syrians were opting to return home from Jordan for a number of reasons, including reports of improved security in a number of border villages, and to protect their property, AFP reported.

Some were also returning to reunite with family members or fetch left-behind relatives and bring them to Jordan.

Last Wednesday, around 3,000 Syrians left the Zaatari Refugee Camp, constituting the largest single group of returnees since the onset of the conflict, according to the JAF and camp officials.

The number of Syrians returning to their homeland has risen from some 100 to 400 per day over the past two months, according to officials.

The departures continue amid rising calls by rebel officials on refugee communities to return to Syria to “defend” their hometowns and villages from a reported growing number of Hizbollah and Iranian fighters sweeping through southern Syria.

Over 1.6 million Syrian refugees have sought refuge in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey since the beginning of an uprising against President Bashar Assad in March 2011, according to UN figures.