BUKULMEZ, Turkey — Smoking a cigarette outside a Turkish hospital near the Syrian border, a man in a gray gown held his sleeping 2-year-old daughter, Aya. On Aya’s right eye was a bandage. In her left hand was a chocolate bar.
Aya lost her eye when she was struck by shrapnel from a shell that also killed her 8-month-old brother, Mohammad, and their mother. The father and daughter were among about 200,000 people who the U.N. said late Sunday have fled Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, during days of clashes between rebels and the military.
Aleppo residents, some severely wounded, are packing up belongings into cars, trucks and even onto motorcycles to seek temporary shelter in rural villages and schools outside the city and dusty tents across the border in Turkey.
In interviews with The Associated Press, refugees described a city besieged by government troops and beset by incessant shelling. Food supplies and gasoline are running low, and black market prices for everyday staples are soaring.
As the violence intensified, the country’s most senior diplomat in London defected. Charge d’affaires Khaled al-Ayoubi is the latest in a string of high-profile diplomats to abandon President Bashar Assad’s regime over a crackdown that, according to rights activists, has killed more than 19,000 people since March 2011.
The battle for Aleppo, a city of 3 million that was once a bastion of support for Assad, is critical for both the regime and the opposition. Its fall would give the opposition a major strategic victory with a stronghold in the north. A rebel defeat, at the very least, would buy Assad more time.
Activists said regime forces were shelling rebel-held districts of the city and a cluster of surrounding villages Monday, sending panicked residents fleeing. Many went to Turkey, about 30 miles away, where tens of thousands of Syrians have found refuge during the uprising.
Reem, a woman in her 30s who fled Aleppo’s rebel-held district of Saif al-Dawleh, was among those who showed up in Turkey on Monday.
“The situation in Aleppo is dreadful,” she said soon after arriving at the Bukulmez illegal border crossing, where she was greeted by Turkish soldiers. “Had it been merely bearable, I wouldn’t have left my home.”
Reem described hiding for three days in a room near the entrance of the building in which she lived. She then fled to a village near the Turkish border before crossing over Monday.
“I blame the regime for everything. People in the city used to go out and protest peacefully, but they just shot at them,” said Reem, who would not give her last name.
The U.N. said 200,000 Syrians have left Aleppo over the past 10 days as the government trains its mortars, tanks and helicopter gunships on the neighborhoods seized by the rebels.
“I am extremely concerned by the impact of shelling and use of tanks and other heavy weapons on people in Aleppo,” said Valerie Amos, the top U.N. official for humanitarian affairs, in a statement late Sunday. “Many people have sought temporary shelter in schools and other public buildings in safer areas. They urgently need food, mattresses and blankets, hygiene supplies and drinking water.”
The Syrian Foreign Ministry defended its offensive in Aleppo province, saying it was meant to protect innocent people.
In two letters addressed to the head of the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. Secretary General, Syria said that “armed terrorist groups” backed openly with funds and weapons by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have committed “horrifying crimes” against innocent civilians. It accused the rebels of using residents as human shields.
Syrian state media reported the army had “purged” Aleppo’s southwestern neighborhood of Salaheddine and inflicted “great losses” upon the rebels. Activists disputed these claims.
