ST. LOUIS (AP) – A center to welcome refugees from Syria and elsewhere is set to open in St. Louis.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/1lU0s2j ) reports that the refugee center is scheduled to open Thursday.
Muslim police chaplains Adil Imdad and Dzemal Bijedic said they began to look for a warehouse to open a no-pay thrift shop to provide goods and services to an expected influx of Syrian refugees to the area.

The International Institute of St. Louis says the agency has agreed to sponsor 500 Syrians in addition to the 650 or so other refugees that it helps resettle annually.

The new warehouse and center, which will be run by volunteers, has received many items, including several hundred boxes of donations from a mosque in Little Rock, Arkansas earlier this week.