Turkey faces surge in Syrian refugees

ANKARA: Turkey is facing one of the biggest influxes of refugees from neighbouring Syria since the war there began more than three years ago, the United Nations’ refugee agency said on Sunday, as civilians continued to flee clashes between Isil militants and Kurdish forces.

Isil fighters seized dozens of villages close to the border and advanced on the frontier town of Ayn Al Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish, as Kurdish commanders issued a rallying cry to Turkish Kurds to join the fight.

At least 70,000 people are confirmed to have crossed into Turkey in less than two days, and the real figure may be more than 100,000, Carol Batchelor, UNHCR’s representative in Turkey told Reuters on Sunday.

“I don’t think in the last three and a half years we have seen 100,000 cross in two days. So this is a bit of a measure of how this situation is unfolding, and the very deep fear people have about the circumstances inside Syria and for that matter, Iraq,” Batchelor said in an interview from the Turkish capital, Ankara.

After initially turning people back, Turkish authorities on Friday opened parts of the frontier to allow civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, to cross to safety.

Turkey is already hosting 1.3 million Syrian refugees and officials estimate the relief effort has cost the government in excess of $3 billion (Dh11 billion).

Batchelor expressed gratitude to Turkey, warning that the ferocity of the fighting and the fast-moving situation near Kobani made any cross-border aid efforts impossible, meaning there was no option other than to keep the Turkish border open.

“Quite frankly we don’t know when those numbers will end, we don’t know what the future holds ... It could well go again into the hundreds of thousands. We need assistance for core, life-saving support,” Batchelor added.

Isil has seized at least 64 villages around Kobani since the onslaught started on Tuesday, using heavy arms and thousands of fighters. It executed at least 11 civilians on Saturday, including at least two boys, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday. UNHCR says it has received less than a quarter of an estimated $497 million it requested to tackle the refugee problem facing Turkey.