Syrian refugees flee as violence escalates
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RAMTHA, Jordan -- Syrian refugees fleeing to Jordan for their lives described a dramatic escalation in violence and a mounting toll of dead and wounded in the southern city of Daraa and the country's battered central region.
Medical workers in neighboring Jordan prepared blood donations to send to Daraa, the city where the uprising against President Bashar Assad erupted nearly a year ago, as the regime struggled to extinguish major pockets of dissent with intensive shelling.
Activists said at least 26 civilians were killed Friday, many of them in the rebellious central city of Homs, where shells slammed into rebel-held residential areas.
The fighting in Homs, coupled with fresh violence in Daraa, has triggered a new wave of wounded refugees crossing the border into Jordan.
"Government troops are shelling everything, whether it's buildings, people, houses. They consider us nothing. They want to eliminate us totally," said Seif, a 22-year-old who was receiving medical treatment in a Jordanian hospital along with other Syrian refugees.
Seif said he was working with army defectors from the Free Syrian Army, helping retrieve the wounded from collapsed buildings and homes, when he was hit by shrapnel in his leg. He could not receive medical treatment in Syria, fearing he would be arrested and killed by pro-Assad gunmen.
"Our crime was helping people," said Seif, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals by the Assad government. "But the regime accuses us of being terrorists."
Attacks on Daraa, where the uprising was touched off in March by the arrest of teenagers who scrawled anti-regime graffiti on the walls of the provincial capital, have escalated in the past few days.
First Published February 18, 2012 12:00 am
