BELFAST – A special celebration to welcome Syrian refugees in Ireland has been held in Belfast, in a bid to help them integrate in the society.

“I want to thank the people of Belfast and the government for looking after us,” Louia, an 18-year-old Syrian refugee, told BBC on Monday, March 21.

“I want to thank you a million times.”

The young Syrian said he spent two years in Beirut after fleeing his home in Syria with his mum, sister and younger brother.

Coming to Belfast, he was invited along with other Syrian refugees to a celebration last Saturday night to welcome them to Northern Ireland.

The gathering, the first since coming to Ireland, stirred the feelings of refugees.

“When I met all the other Syrians I feel like I’m at home,” Louia said.

“We discussed all the issues going on in Syria and we felt as if we were at home. We enjoyed all of it,” he added.

Dr Raied Al-Wazzan, an Iraqi who has lived in Northern Ireland for 26 years, said the event was important to help refugees integrate in their new society.

“We want them to integrate, we want them to meet local people from the Arab community and local Irish and British people and we also invited potential employers and social clubs to meet them because we want to integrate them as quickly as possible into the community,” Al-Wazzan, who helped to organize the event, said.

The event was also attended by Máirtín Ó Muilleoir and Emma Pengelly, both member of the Legislative Assembly.

“The people of Belfast showed an overwhelming amount of generosity when they arrived before Christmas but for all sorts of reasons there wasn’t the opportunity to express that,” Ó Muilleoir said.

“We need to make sure that when people come here from other lands having survived the civil war in Syria, coming through the hardships of the refugee camps that when they come here we make them as welcome as the Irish have been made all over the world.”

As the conflict in Syria enters its fifth year, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has released a new report that the number of children affected by the civil war in Syria has more than doubled over the past year.

UNICEF said the child casualty rates were the highest recorded in any recent conflict in the region.

It cited UN figures that at least 10,000 children have been killed in the Syrian war but noted that the real number is probably higher.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said that more than 136,000 have been killed since a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.