Syrian refugee crisis deepens, U.N. says

Militants’ gains fuel surge at borders

U.N. peacekeepers keep an eye on Syria’s Quneitra province Friday at an observation point on Mount Bental in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights overlooking the border with Syria.
U.N. peacekeepers keep an eye on Syria’s Quneitra province Friday at an observation point on Mount Bental in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights overlooking the border with Syria.

GENEVA -- The civil war in Syria has forced 3 million people out of the country, including more than 1 million people who fled in the past year, creating a crisis that the United Nations refugee agency said requires the biggest operation in its 64-year history.

About one of every eight Syrians has fled across the borders. Additionally, 6.5 million have been displaced within Syria since the conflict began in March 2011, the Geneva-based agency said. More than half of all those uprooted are children, it said.

Syria had a prewar population of 23 million.

"The Syria crisis has become the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era, yet the world is failing to meet the needs of refugees and the countries hosting them," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres.

The agency described the 3 million as a record but later said the Syrian crisis was record-breaking in terms of the unprecedented size and scope of the $3.74 billion operation needed to care for the refugees.

The International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian relief agency, said the situation has reached a level of disaster not seen worldwide since the Rwandan genocide more than 20 years ago that saw fewer people -- about 1.5 million -- displaced but nearly 1 million killed.

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AP

A Lebanese army soldier inspects rifles Friday at Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut. The United States has delivered the first weapons shipment to Lebanon to help its military as it faces a growing threat from Islamic militants.

The dead in the Syrian conflict have been estimated by the United Nations at more than 200,000 since it began in early 2011.

The recent surge in fighting appears to be worsening the already desperate situation for Syrian refugees, the U.N. refugee agency said, as the extremist Islamic State group expands its control of broad areas straddling the Syria-Iraq border and terrorizes rivals and civilians in both countries.

According to the agency, many of the new arrivals in Jordan are from Syria's northern province of Aleppo and the northeastern region of Raqqa, a stronghold of the group. An independent U.N. commission said the group is systematically carrying out widespread bombings, beheadings and mass killings that amount to crimes against humanity in both areas.

"Three million refugees is not just another statistic. It is a searing indictment of our collective failure to end the war in Syria," Angelina Jolie, the U.N.'s refugee agency special envoy, said in a statement after the release of the report.

The number of Syrians fleeing the civil war has stretched the resources of neighboring countries and raised fears of violence spreading in the region. But some fear the world's attention is getting diverted.

"With so many crises erupting simultaneously around us, with so much suffering, there is a risk that the victims of the Syrian crisis and their needs will slip from the public eye," said Kristalina Georgieva, aid chief for the European Union.

The refugee agency and other aid groups say an increasing number of families are arriving in other countries in shockingly poor condition, exhausted and scared and with almost no financial savings left after having been on the run for a year or more.

In eastern Jordan, the agency said, refugees crossing the desert are forced to pay smugglers $100 per person or more to be taken to safety.

As of Friday, Lebanon had 1,176,971 Syrian refugees, the most of any country. Turkey had 832,508; Jordan, 613,252; Iraq, 215,369; Egypt, 139,090; and North Africa, 23,367.

Lebanon has refused to formulate an official government plan to deal with crisis, leaving virtually all of the aid and organizational work to either outside aid groups or even to the refugees themselves, who instead of living in camps where the population can be easily accessed by aid groups -- such as the Zaatari Camp in northern Jordan -- are scattered throughout Lebanon in small makeshift camps, private homes or even on the streets.

The refugees' presence -- and violent overflow from the battlefields in Syria -- has already led to a series of skirmishes around the city of Arsal, which has nearly tripled in size from its peacetime population of about 50,000 people.

Over the past month, what had been small-scale, occasional clashes between rebels and either the Lebanese Army or the Shiite militant group Hezbollah turned into a full-scale battle that saw dozens of Lebanese army soldiers killed, wounded or captured and much of Arsal destroyed.

In a video released Thursday, militants from the Islamic State extremist group reportedly beheaded one of the Lebanese army captives amid threats of more killings to come if Islamist prisoners held by the Lebanese government were not released.

Officials said Friday that the United States delivered an emergency shipment of weapons to Lebanon's military as part of a broader regional effort to combat the growing threat posed by the extremists.

The Lebanese government requested the weapons after the militants attacked Arsal this month.

The new weapons were displayed at a Beirut air base on Friday after arriving overnight. A sample of the weapons -- mortars, M16-A4 assault rifles and anti-tank missiles -- were placed on a white satin-covered table with camouflage netting.

"This is just the latest in a series of deliveries that have arrived in the last 36 hours," U.S. ambassador David Hale said at the event. Hale said the U.S. had so far delivered 480 anti-tank guided missiles, over 1,500 M16-A4 rifles, and mortars. "More mortars, grenade launchers, machine guns and anti-tank weapons will be arriving," he said.

The weapons shipment is part of a regionwide response -- which is still taking shape -- to the rapid advances of the Islamic State, which has seized vast swaths of Syria and Iraq and threatens several U.S. allies.

Peacekeepers in standoff

In Syria on Friday, another contingent of United Nations peacekeepers was caught in a standoff with Syrian rebels, a day after an armed group captured 43 peacekeepers in the area near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The confrontation Friday involved 75 Filipino soldiers serving in the U.N. mission along the demarcation line between Syria and the Golan Heights. The trouble there started after rebels, including the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, seized control of the only border crossing in the area from the Syrian army Wednesday.

On Thursday, the U.N. said 43 peacekeepers from Fiji had been captured and about 80 others had been confined to their bases because of continued fighting in the area. Then Friday, the Philippine military said that in two places, its soldiers were in a standoff with rebels who had tried to storm their positions the day before.

A Philippine military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Domingo Tutaan, said in Manila that after rebels captured the Fijian contingent, they sent two messengers to the peacekeepers bearing demands that the Filipinos surrender their weapons. The general said the soldiers did not comply and were prepared to defend their positions, as they are permitted to do under their U.N. mandate.

"They have appropriate provisions, both in terms of personal needs, food and ammunition," Tutaan said. "They can last there for a good number of days."

So far, he said, there had been no direct clashes between the Filipino soldiers and the rebel fighters, and the U.N. and the Philippine military said they were working to resolve the situation.

A number of rebel groups that seek to topple President Bashar Assad of Syria are fighting his forces near the Golan Heights. Fighters from the Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaida, were among those who seized the crossing point Wednesday. The even more radical Islamic State did not appear to be involved.

No rebel group has yet claimed publicly to have captured the Fijians, but anti-government activists said they were most likely in the hands of the Nusra Front.

It was not clear why the rebels captured the peacekeepers. In the past, the Nusra Front has demanded ransom payments in exchange for freeing hostages, but no such demand has been received. Some activists suggested that the Nusra Front wanted the captives not for ransom but as human shields, holding them to deter the Syrian government from shelling and bombing the area.

Rebel groups have captured U.N. peacekeepers in the Golan Heights area before, only to later release them unharmed.

The peacekeepers serve in the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force, which also includes personnel from India, Ireland, Nepal and the Netherlands. It has been monitoring a cease-fire and military disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria in the area since 1974.

The plight of the captured peacekeepers remained "very, very fluid" Friday, the secretary-general's spokesman said. Stephane Dujarric said talks continue "with a wide range of parties within Syria" and U.N. member states who may have influence with them. Details remained sketchy, he added.

Iraq strikes continue

As the U.S. considers whether to intervene militarily in Syria, the Pentagon said Friday that U.S. military operations against Islamic State militants in Iraq, including airstrikes and surveillance flights, have cost about $560 million since mid-June.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the average daily cost has been $7.5 million. He said it began at a much lower rate in June and escalated after the airstrikes in northern Iraq began this month.

After he spoke, the U.S. Central Command announced four additional airstrikes, bringing the total since they began on Aug. 8 to 110. Central Command said Friday's missions by U.S. fighter and attack aircraft destroyed four armed vehicles and three support vehicles in the vicinity of the Mosul Dam. One armed vehicle was damaged, it said without providing more details.

Asked why U.S. warplanes are still pounding the Mosul Dam area long after U.S. officials said local Kurdish and Iraqi forces had regained control from the Islamic State forces, Kirby said, "Because ISIL keeps wanting to take it back," using an acronym for the group.

"They keep threatening the dam and the facility. And as long as they pose a threat to that facility, we are going to continue to help Iraqi security forces preserve their ownership of it," he added.

The Pentagon also has security forces in Baghdad and Irbil to protect American personnel and facilities, and teams of U.S. troops are in those two cities to coordinate with Iraqi and Kurdish forces and to assess the strengths and tactics of Islamic State forces.

Kirby said the costs are being paid from the Pentagon's 2014 overseas contingency fund. Top Pentagon officials have said they have adequate funds for the operation through September but that requests to Congress for the next budget year might have to be reconsidered if the Iraq operations intensify further.

Information for this article was contributed by John Heilprin, Diaa Hadid, Robert Burns, Cara Anna, Pita Ligaiula, Nick Perry, Oliver Teves and staff members of The Associated Press; by Ben Hubbard and Floyd Whaley of The New York Times; and by Mitchell Prothero of McClatchy Newspapers.

A Section on 08/30/2014

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