KILIS, Turkey -- Turkey must open its doors to the tens of thousands of Syrians who have massed at the border after fleeing violence, the U.N. demanded Tuesday, as an aide group said tents on the Syrian side are overcrowded and food in short supply.
Turkey, already home to 2.5 million Syrian refugees, insists it has an open-door policy toward Syrians escaping conflict, but has still kept the key Bab al-Salameh border crossing closed for days. Government officials say Turkey will provide assistance to the displaced Syrians within their own borders "as much as possible" and would allow them in "when necessary."
U.N. High Commission for Refugees spokesman William Spindler asked Turkey on Tuesday to open the border to "all civilians who are fleeing danger and seeking international protection as they have done since the start of this crisis."
Spindler also urged other nations to shoulder more of the refugee burden and to work to end the conflict.
"The answer to this crisis is for the peace process to continue in Syria and for the conflict to be solved," Spindler said.
The war in Syria against President Bashar Assad's government has killed over 250,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes since it began in 2011. In recent days, a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive around the country's largest city, Aleppo, has sent an estimated 75,000 Syrians fleeing toward the border with Turkey, according to Abdulsalam al-Shareef, a consultant for the Turkish charity group Humanitarian Relief Foundation.
The group, which has been distributing food, medicines and blankets at the border, said Tuesday that it was expanding an existing displaced persons camp a few miles away from Bab al-Salameh and was "surveying" sites for possible new camps.
"Today the situation got worse because yesterday [Tuesday] night and [this] morning, Russian jets started bombing two big cities, Tel Rifaat and Marea," he said. "It is really a big disaster."
Although some humanitarian aid has arrived, there is still quite a large need for basic humanitarian assistance because of the sheer scale of the situation, said Dalia al-Awqati, north Syria director for the Mercy Corps aid group.
"The ability to provide individual shelter for new arrivals is definitely being challenged," she said. "The tents are definitely overcrowded and the food is overstretched."
Al-Awqati added the displaced Syrians are not likely to return because their homes "are no longer accessible."
On Tuesday, the United Nations also warned that hundreds of thousands of others in Aleppo could soon be cut off from humanitarian aid amid blistering Syrian and Russian airstrikes.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 300,000 people could be cut off from aid if the Syrian government and allied forces encircle the city of Aleppo and deprive those fleeing from their last way out. The agency said area leaders believe up to 150,000 people could try to flee to nearby Afrin and the surrounding countryside.
"There is a lot of fear, especially after people saw Madaya," said opposition media activist Karam Almasri, referring to a besieged town in southern Syria.
"They don't want the same to happen to them," added Almasri, who lives in Aleppo's war-ravaged neighborhood of Bustan al-Qasr.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu estimated that up to 1 million more people could flee if the onslaught continues.
Many people who can leave besieged areas like Aleppo are preparing to do so, said Bahaa Halaby, an opposition media activist. "We call them the smart ones. ... They are packing their bags so that they don't get struck by the planes."
But tens of thousands are likely to remain, some because they have no means to find somewhere safe to go, and others because they choose to stay.
"We are choosing one death over another," said Halaby, who plans to stay around Aleppo. "Let us die in our land and in our homes [rather] than in the cold at the border."
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu urged the world to speak out against Russia for "mercilessly bombing civilian targets" in Syria. He predicted that Russia would eventually retreat from Syria in "embarrassment" -- in a way similar to the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan.
"Those ... who turned Syria into a bloodbath will certainly pay for it one day," Davutoglu said.
Russia has insisted its warplanes target the Islamic State and other extremist groups and has firmly denied that they hit civilian areas.
Several aid trucks could be seen moving Tuesday through Turkey's Oncupinar border crossing, opposite the Bab al-Salameh gate in Syria, which remained shut to refugees for the fifth-straight day.
At a joint news conference with his Hungarian counterpart in Budapest, Cavusoglu, the foreign minister, said Turkey was admitting refugees "in a controlled manner" and that 10,000 Syrians had been allowed in recently. He did not elaborate, and it was not clear if he was referring to the thousands of Syrian Turkmens who were admitted into Turkey earlier this month.
The U.N.'s World Food Program said Tuesday it has begun shipping lentils, pasta, beans, vegetable oil, wheat flour, sugar and other items to the town of Azaz northwest of Aleppo, near the border with Turkey, and hopes to continue in coming days.
"We are extremely concerned, as access and supply routes from the north to eastern Aleppo city and surrounding areas are now cut off," said Jakob Kern, the program's country director for Syria. "But we are making every effort to get enough food in place for all those in need, bringing it in through the remaining open border crossing point from Turkey."
Information for this article was contributed by Suzan Fraser, Dominique Soguel and Philip Issa of The Associated Press.
A Section on 02/10/2016