Beirut/Geneva: The number of Syrians fleeing their conflict-torn homeland has hit 5,000 a day, while overall numbers have risen by 25 per cent in the past month alone, the UN refugee agency said on Friday.
“Five thousand people are now crossing the border of Syria every single day,” said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
“We now have 787,000 refugees who are registered or are pending registration,” he told reporters in Geneva, noting that the figures were still climbing.
The largest number have fled to Lebanon, which is hosting almost 261,000 Syrians, followed by Jordan, with close to 243,000.
Some 177,000 Syrians have fled to Turkey, and around 85,000 to Iraq.
In countries without a direct border with Syria, Egypt is the top destination, with 15,000, while another 6,300 are scattered across other North African nations.
Edwards said that overall, the refugee numbers had risen by a quarter in January, with an increase of 150,000 on the 600,000 recorded at the end of December.
Meanwhile, Syrian forces on Friday shelled rebel belts on the eastern and southern outskirts of Damascus where street battles also erupted, a watchdog said, as an army offensive raged into a third straight day.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Jubar district in the east and nearby Qaboon were heavily shelled, as were the Hajar Al Aswad, Qadam, Assali neighbourhoods in the south.
Fighting between rebels and government forces erupted at dawn around the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees to the south of the capital, the Britain-based watchdog said.
It added that six rebels were killed in shelling at dawn of the city of Mudamiyah, just south of the capital, while another rebel bastion, Daraya also in the south, was likewise hit by the regime’s artillery.
Clashes erupted at several places along the highway running through the capital’s eastern and southern districts, the Observatory said.
The Zamalka neighbourhood, also in the east, meanwhile was bombed by government jets as clashes between loyalists and rebels erupted.
The army on Tuesday launched a major offensive against rebel zones surrounding Damascus as it sought to break the military stalemate in Syria’s almost 23-month conflict, which began as a popular uprising against Assad.
Pro-regime newspaper Al Watan said this week that the army was “determined to crush terrorism around the capital and big cities.”
Loyalists troops made ground in the country’s north, retaking Karnaz on the strategic Damascus-Aleppo highway on Wednesday after a 16-day onslaught, said Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Observatory.
The outgunned rebel “fighters withdrew from Karnaz, which they seized in December last year, after heavy fighting and regular forces regained control,” he told AFP.
Opposition leader Ahmad Muath Al Khatib has offered to hold peace talks with Syria’s Vice-President Farouk Al Sha’ra, but Damascus has so far ignored the initiative and has instead intensified attacks on rebel bastions.
The United Nations says more than 60,000 people have been killed in violence across Syria since the outbreak of a revolt in March 2011 that morphed into an insurgency after the army launched a brutal crackdown on dissent.
