Ankara : Some 70,000 Syrian Kurds have crossed into Turkey since Friday fleeing violence spread by the Islamic State (IS) militants, who have seized dozens of Kurdish villages in northern Syria, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Sunday.
The UNHCR stepped up “its response to help Turkey come to the aid of an estimated 70,000 Syrians who crossed into Turkey in the last 24 hours,” a UNHCR statement said, adding that it had already delivered 20 truckloads of humanitarian assistance, Xinhua reported.
“We have opened our doors because we had to,” Numan Kurtulmus, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister told reporters Saturday in the southern province of Sanliurfa, where the refugees have taken shelter.
Turkey is ready to cope with an even larger refugee influx, he added.
“As of today, the number of Syrian Kurds who entered Turkey has exceeded 60,000,” he said.
He also expressed hope that they could go back to their country as soon as possible.
Turkey opened the frontier to cope with a rush of Syrian civilians on the Syrian border town of Ain al-Arab Friday.
As of August, Turkey has sheltered about 1.4 million Syrian refugees from Syria. About 220,000 of them were accommodated in 24 refugee camps in Turkey’s 10 provinces.