Britain's foreign minister William Hague speaks to the media as he arrives for the informal EU Foreign Affairs Ministers meeting in Kouklia outside of Paphos, Cyprus, Friday, Sept. 7, 2012. Hague says, EU countries can only provide non-lethal aid to Syrian opposition groups because of an EU arms embargo that renders the supply of any weapons illegal. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
UN refugee agency says 5,000 fleeing Syria daily
Published: 05:01:48 PM, Fri 08 February 2013 UTC
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.
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