Ankara : More than 130,000 Syrian Kurds have crossed into Turkey since Friday fleeing from the violence of Islamic State (IS) militants who have seized dozens of Kurdish villages in northern Syria, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Monday.
“The number of Syrian refugees have passed 130,000,” Xinhua quoted him as telling reporters in the Turkey’s capital Ankara, adding that the number could rise.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement Sunday that it has stepped up its response to help Turkey provide aid to the Syrian refugees who crossed into Turkey since Friday.
Turkey opened the frontier to cope with a rush of Syrian civilians on the Syrian border town of Ain al-Arab on Friday.
Turkish authorities once refused the Syrians fleeing from clashes between IS militants and Kurdish fighters to enter its soil over fears from disability to shelter more refugees from the Syrian conflict.
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.