Epress.am News from Armenia
A government offensive in Syria’s northwest has sharply increased the flow of refugees into Turkey, with about a thousand crossing in the last 24 hours, Turkish officials said on Thursday, Reuters reports.
The numbers fleeing was expected to grow further as long as fighting continued around the town of Idlib, close to the Turkish border, one Turkish official said; but he declined to say how many more Turkey was expecting.
Turkey is wary of any military interventions in Syria, fearing a broader civil war could spill over its borders; but it has signaled that a tide of refugees is one of the factors that could trigger efforts to establish a ‘safe zone’ inside Syria.
“There has been an increase in those fleeing from Syria to our country,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Selcuk Unal told a news conference. “Yesterday, the number of people who had come was 13,700. This morning, the number is 14,700,”
“This shows the seriousness of the situation in Syria.”
A steady stream of refugees slips silently through gaps in the barbed wire fence that divides the two countries before settling down to rest on the Turkish side after their perilous journey through the hills dodging landmines and the Syrian army.
There the smugglers leave them to be picked up by Turkish security forces and return across the border to pick up more.
Minibuses ferry the refugees, most of them women and children, to nearby camps to join the thousands already there.
One of the camps inside Turkey, surrounded by high security fences, also houses military defectors. Turkey denies arming the Free Syrian Army rebel force, but analysts say it receives at least logistical and communications support from Ankara.
Turkish officials estimated there were some 200 to 300 Syrians crossing daily into Turkey last week, itself a sharp increase on the numbers in previous weeks.
In response Turkey is to open a new refugee camp near the southern town of Kilis next month to host a further 10,000 Syrians, and work has begun on a camp near the eastern end of the border at Ceylanpinar for 20,000 people, the official said.
That would bring the total capacity for Syrian refugees to some 45,000.