Syrian Refugees Flood Into Jordan and Turkey in a Sharp Rise

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Melissa Fleming, the chief spokeswoman for the refugee agency, said that 10,200 Syrians had crossed into northern Jordan between Aug. 21 and Aug. 27, compared with 4,500 the week before. The refugees, she said, included an increasing number of unaccompanied children, some orphans and others sent ahead by parents, sometimes without passports.

“Refugees say many thousands more are waiting to cross amid violence around Dara’a,” Ms. Fleming said, referring to the southern Syrian province that borders Jordan. “We believe this could be the start of a much larger influx. Some of those who have crossed in recent days — especially Friday — report being bombed by aircraft. There are also reports of shelling, mortars and other weapons fire.”

The waves of refugees fleeing Dara’a, the Damascus suburbs, Aleppo and the Idlib region near Turkey in recent days have provided a barometer of the escalating violence in the 18-month-old conflict, in which neither the government of President Bashar al-Assad nor the opposition seems capable of striking a decisive blow.

Ms. Fleming said the number of refugees escaping to Turkey had multiplied to 5,000 a day from 400 or 500 daily several weeks ago. In the past 24 hours, she said, 3,000 people had entered Turkey, with 10,000 more waiting.

In Turkey, which had said it would not accept more than 100,000 refugees, officials said they had revised the number to 120,000, and were preparing contingency plans for more.

In recent days, the Syrian military has engaged in a punishing assault on cities and neighborhoods surrounding the capital, Damascus, that harbor insurgent fighters. People who fled the suburb of Daraya said hundreds had been killed by government troops, including scores of civilians. On Tuesday, one resident, a government employee who left the city during the worst of the fighting, said by telephone that Daraya was quiet.

“Regime forces pulled out from the city to the outskirts,” he said. “I didn’t see any of the Free Syrian Army,” a reference to the opposition fighters. “I don’t know if they pulled out or are just hiding somewhere. God knows where they go.”

The man said he was planning on moving to Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, to stay with relatives. Daraya, he said, “is no longer safe.”

Elsewhere around Damascus, at least 12 people were killed when a booby-trapped taxi exploded during a funeral procession in the suburb of Jaramana, in what the state news media called a “terrorist bombing.” An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw damaged buildings and shattered windows, and interviewed a woman who said her 6-year-old daughter had been killed.

In Idlib Province at least 23 people were killed after warplanes bombed the city of Kafr Nabl, according to activists and a local opposition commander, who said that one bomb had hit a market and that the dead were mostly civilians.

“The planes used to attack the outskirts, but today they changed their habit and attacked the center,” the commander said.

The death toll could not be corroborated, but at least five wounded people can be seen in a five-minute video that purports to show the aftermath of one bombing. It seems to have been filmed soon after an airstrike, opening with panicked scenes of cars and shops on fire, a rubble-strewn street and buildings pulverized by an explosion.

A man stumbles by the camera, clutching his left ear. “Oh, God!” someone wails, as the camera turns to a man, caked in blood, on a truck bed. Two other victims are carried past the camera: one has a large wound in the right thigh, and the other appears to be dead. Past a large, round crater in the ground, another victim is rolled onto a blanket and a second is dragged by his shirt.

Citing the failure of Syria’s fractured opposition movement to stem the bloodshed, a Syrian dissident, Bassma Kodmani, announced her resignation on Tuesday from the Syrian National Council, the main exile opposition group.

Since its creation, the council has been plagued by squabbles and criticized as a front for exiled dissidents — and principally, the Muslim Brotherhood — with little support inside Syria.

Ms. Kodmani, who was a member of the council’s executive committee and one of its most prominent faces, alluded to those criticisms in a statement on Tuesday, saying that the council had not maintained “the required credibility” and “veered from the path we set for it.”

She said that she would continue her opposition work from outside the council.

Her comments came as a group of Syrian dissidents presented a report in Berlin that they said was intended as a road map for a democratic transition to power after the fall of President Assad. The report, called the “The Day After Project,” was drafted by 45 Syrian activists who said they represented a broad spectrum of political and religious organizations.

Their meetings, held over the last year and a half, were initiated by the United States Institute of Peace, an independent but Congressionally financed organization, and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.