REYHANLI, turkey — After days of relentless shelling and sniper attacks, thousands of Syrian refugees streamed across the border into Turkey with horrific accounts Friday of mass graves, massacres and burned-out homes.
The latest reports of violence fueled accusations that President Bashar Assad is rushing to stamp out as much of the year-old uprising as he can before a U.N.-brokered cease-fire next week.
The trigger for the new waves of refugees was an offensive in Idlib province, which borders Turkey and has become increasingly rebellious against the Assad regime. Activists reported about 100 dead in the villages of Taftanaz and Killi in recent days.
A photograph provided to The Associated Press by a Syrian activist showed at least a dozen corpses wrapped in blankets in what appeared to be a mass grave in Taftanaz. AP could not verify the authenticity of the photograph, but witnesses also described a mass grave.
“They destroyed the whole village,” said a refugee who asked to be identified by only one name, Anas, on Friday after fleeing Killi. “If he has to kill, Bashar would even kill 1 million people. He doesn’t care.”
The escalating violence has dimmed hopes that the fighting, which the U.N. says has killed more than 9,000 people, will end anytime soon. The country appears to be spiraling toward civil war.
Assad last week accepted a cease-fire deadline brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan, which calls for his forces to pull out of towns and cities by Tuesday and for everyone to lay down their arms by 6 a.m. local time Thursday.
Western leaders have cast doubt on Assad’s intentions, suggesting he is playing for time and is not serious about the plan. On Friday, Syria’s state-run news agency, SANA, appeared to acknowledge the recent spike in violence but again blamed terrorism.
The stream of Syrians fleeing to Turkey has picked up considerably, with about one-third of the total of 24,000 refugees arriving in the past two weeks. About 2,500 crossed the border Thursday alone, said Ankara’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, adding that the daily flow has doubled since Syria promised last week to abide by the truce.
