BAGHDAD (AP)
-- Tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds swarmed across a bridge into
neighboring Iraq's northern self-ruled Kurdish region over the past few
days in one of the biggest waves of refugees since the rebellion against
President Bashar Assad began, U.N. officials said Monday.
The
sudden exodus of around 30,000 Syrians amid the summer heat has created
desperate conditions and left aid agencies and the regional government
struggling to accommodate them, illustrating the huge strain the 2
1/2-year-old Syrian conflict has put on neighboring countries.
The
mostly Kurdish men, women and children who made the trek join some 1.9
million Syrians who already have found refuge abroad from Syria's
relentless carnage.
"This is an unprecedented
influx of refugees, and the main concern is that so many of them are
stuck out in the open at the border or in emergency reception areas with
limited, if any, access to basic services," said Alan Paul, emergency
team leader for the Britain-based charity Save the Children.
"The
refugee response in Iraq is already thinly stretched, and close to half
of the refugees are children who have experienced things no child
should," he said, adding that thousands of refugees were stranded at the
border, waiting to be registered.
The U.N.
said the reason for this flow, which began five days ago and continued
unabated Monday, is unclear. But Kurdish areas in northeastern Syria
have been engulfed by fighting in recent months between Kurdish militias
and Islamic extremist rebel factions with links to al-Qaida. Dozens
have been killed.
Following the assassination
of a prominent Kurdish leader late last month, a powerful Kurdish
militia said it was mobilizing to expel Islamic extremists.
On
Monday, activists said fighters from al-Qaida-linked jihadi groups
shelled areas in the predominantly Kurdish town of Ras al-Ayn with
mortars and artillery, coinciding with clashes in the area between
Kurdish gunmen and jihadi fighters.
"Syrian
refugees are still pouring into Iraq's northern Kurdish region in huge
numbers, and most of them are women and children," said Youssef Mahmoud,
a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Iraq's Kurdish region.
"Today,
some 3,000 Syrian refugees crossed the borders, and that has brought
the number to around 30,000 refugees since Thursday."
The latest wave has brought the overall number of Syrian refugees in the Kurdish region to around 195,000, he added.
The
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has set up an emergency transit
camp in Irbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region, to house
some of the new arrivals. Some of the refugees were said to be staying
in mosques or with family or friends who live in the area, according to
the agency.
At one camp near Irbil, dozens of
refugees carrying their bags, belongings and babies roamed through rows
of tents, footage shot by AP Television News showed. Some men lined up
to get blocks of ice from a pickup truck. Children huddled around a
truck to get watermelon distributed by regional security forces.
UNHCR
said it is sending 15 truckloads of supplies - 3,100 tents, two
pre-fabricated warehouses and thousands of jerry cans to carry water -
from its regional stockpile in Jordan. It said the shipment should
arrive by the end of the week.
Kurds are
Syria's largest ethnic minority, making up more than 10 percent of the
country's 23 million people. They are centered in the poor northeastern
regions of Hassakeh and Qamishli, wedged between the borders of Turkey
and Iraq. There are also several predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods in
the capital, Damascus, and Syria's largest city, Aleppo.
Bahzad
Ali Adam, deputy governor of Iraq's Dahuk province, which borders
Syria, said the latest flow will put more strain on the budget and
public services in the region, which is also home to thousands of mainly
Iraqi Arabs and Christians who have fled the violence in other parts of
the country.
"The refugees need place to
live, food and health services," Adam, who heads the operation room to
receive Syrian refugees, said in a phone interview from Baghdad.
Earlier
this month, the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, Massoud
Barzani, vowed to defend Syria's Kurds. He gave no details on how he
would do so, but Iraqi Kurdistan boasts a powerful and experienced armed
force known as the peshmerga.
Armed
intervention by Iraqi Kurds would carry enormous risks and appears
unlikely. Still, the pledge, along with the fighting, shows the
potential of Syria's conflict to spread to neighboring countries and
become a full-blown regional war.
The Kurdish
exodus is just one layer in Syria's increasingly complex civil war,
which has killed more than 100,000 people, ripped apart the country's
delicate sectarian fabric and destroyed cities and towns. Assad's regime
has used warplanes, tanks and ballistic missiles to try to pound
rebellious areas into submission.
The rebels,
along with the U.S. and other Western powers, say the Assad regime has
also used chemical weapons in the conflict. The Syrian government and
its ally, Russia, blame the opposition for the alleged chemical attacks.
On Monday, a team of U.N. experts began their long-awaited investigation into the purported used of chemical arms.
The
team's task is to determine whether chemical weapons have been used,
and if so, which ones. Its mandate does not extend to establishing who
was responsible for an attack, and that has led some observers to
question the overall value of the probe.
In
Monday's violence, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
said regime forces in the coastal province of Latakia recaptured nine
villages as well as all of the hilltop military observation posts that
rebels seized two weeks ago.
---
Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Ryan Lucas contributed from Beirut.
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