BEIRUT: The leader of Hezbollah said Thursday the issue of the growing number of refugees fleeing Syria to Lebanon should not be politicized and that their case should be dealt with solely on a humanitarian basis.

“We should deal with the presence of Syrian refugees in a purely humanitarian manner and not politicize it,” Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said.

“The Syrian families should be taken care of by the Lebanese government, whether they were with the opposition or the regime or in between,” he added.

“And if there were reservations on politicizing this issue then we should listen to these remarks and take them into consideration,” he said, in an apparent reference to recent complaints by Syria’s envoy to Lebanon, Ali Abdel-Karim Ali.

Ali has sent several complaints to Lebanese officials over what he describes as discrimination by the Social Affairs Ministry toward Syrian refugees in Lebanon on the basis of their political affiliations.