Beiruting News

Lebanon is to provide schooling for tens of thousands more children this year including Syrian refugees, the education ministry said on Monday, as the country tries to cope with the effects of the war next door.

Funding from international donors, UN refugee agency UNHCR and children's fund UNICEF could see up to 100,000 more Syrian children, twice the number of last year, attend public schools for free, the ministry and organisations announced at a joint news conference.

With Lebanon hosting the highest proportion of Syrian refugees - 1.1 million in a country of 4 million people - some public schools already have more Syrian than Lebanese students.

Lebanon stopped UNHCR registering Syrian refugees in May in an attempt to cope with large numbers of people fleeing the four-year-old civil war.