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February 11, 2013

Fighting Escalates in Syrian Capital; 5,000 Fleeing Per Day 
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Syria's capital of Damascus is seeing its heaviest violence in over six
months as government forces and rebel fighters battle for control of a
key highway. The fighting in Damascus comes as rebels have also launched
offensives in several Syrian areas. Activists with the Local
Coordination Committees say at least 77 people were killed nationwide on
Sunday. At the United Nations, a spokesperson for the High Commissioner
for Refugees said 5,000 Syrians are now fleeing the country each day.
Adrian Edwards: "Five thousand 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. Today's figures, there are 787,000 Syrians
are now registered or being assisted as refugees. If you go back to the
19th of December when we issued our Syria regional response plan, the
figures then were 515,000. There has been a huge increase in January
alone; We're talking of a 25 percent increase in registered refugee
numbers over a single month."

 

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