Harry and Meghan meet Syrian refugees, Palestinian children in Jordan

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrived on Wednesday in Jordan, where they met with Syrian refugees at the Zaatari camp and Palestinian children evacuated from the Gaza Strip.

King Charles III's younger son and his wife "met young refugees... and joined children in football, art and music," the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said in a post on X.

Jordan opened the Zaatari camp located north of Amman in 2012, a year into the war in neighboring Syria, to host people fleeing the war.

Today it is home to some 45,000 refugees.

The U.N. says around 680,000 Syrians were registered in Jordan from 2011 onwards, though the kingdom says it welcomed 1.3 million.

Some 200,000 Syrians went back to their country after the ouster of former president Bashar al-Assad in late 2024.

Invited to Jordan by the World Health Organization, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan also visited a hospital in Amman where they met with children evacuated for medical reasons from Gaza, ravaged by more than two years of war between Israel and Hamas.

The couple's office said the two-day visit "will focus on humanitarian health response, mental health and support for vulnerable communities affected by conflict and displacement."

Prince Harry said in a statement released by the WHO: "We remain deeply committed to advancing awareness, reducing stigma and expanding access to mental health support for all those affected by conflict and crisis."

Meghan and Harry stepped back from royal duties and moved to California in 2020 over rifts with the royal family and concerns about Meghan's treatment by the British press, which Harry has long blamed for the death of his mother Diana.