UN refugee agency says 5,000 fleeing Syria daily

787,000 Syrians currently registered or being helped as refugees, mainly in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey

8 February 2013, 7:55 pm

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Newly arrived Syrian refugees wait for their turn to receive a mattress, blankets and other supplies, and to be assigned to tents, at the Zaatari Syrian refugees camp in Mafraq, near the Syrian border with Jordan, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013 (photo credit: AP/Mohammad Hannon)

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. refugee agency says there has been a huge increase in the number of people fleeing Syria, with 5,000 refugees crossing the borders daily into neighboring countries.

Agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says that “5,000 people are now crossing the borders of Syria into other countries every single day, so this is really a full-on crisis right at the moment.”

Edwards told reporters Friday in Geneva that there are now 787,000 Syrians who are registered or being helped as refugees, mainly in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey.

He says the number shot up by 25 percent alone in January, and that in mid-December, when the agency issued its response plan for Syria, there were 515,000 refugees.