About 1,000 Syrians enter Turkey in last 24 hrs
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E-mail Xinhua, March 15, 2012
Around 1,000 Syrian refugees, including a general in the army, fled to Turkey in the last 24 hours, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday morning.
"The number of Syrians currently staying in Turkey climbed to 14,700 today," Turkey's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Selcuk Unal said at a press conference.
The number was 13,700 on Wednesday, the spokesperson said, indicating a dramatic increase of 1,000 Syrians entering Turkey from Wednesday to Thursday.
About 14,200 of those Syrian refugees were staying in the camps of southeastern Turkey's Hatay city near the border with Syria, and 500 Syrians who were sheltered in Reyhanli town of Hatay are transferred to a new camp in Gaziantep province, Unal said.
A defecting general was also among the latest wave of Syrian refugees, Unal said Thursday. "With the Syrian general arrived yesterday, (the number of) Syrian generals that stayed in Turkey increased to seven."
Those figures showed how serious the situation in Syria was, Unal said. "We are getting prepared for any scenario, with the expectation that the number will further rise."
The number of Syrians entering Turkey has increased sharply after Syrian security forces staged military operations in the rebels' stronghold Idlib.
Turkey, once a close ally of Syria, has repeatedly called on Damascus to stop violence against civilians and has imposed on Syria a series of sanctions, including an arms embargo, in protest of the Syrian government's alleged crackdown on opposing forces.
