Turkey says 4,000 flee Syria

Turkey says 4,000 flee Syria, thousands more at border

                              More than 4,000 Syrians have fled to Turkey to escape a crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad and thousands more are sheltering near the border, officials and activists said on Saturday.                      
                              A senior Turkish diplomat said 4,300 Syrians had crossed the border and that Turkey was prepared for a further influx, though he declined to predict how many might come.


                           "Turkey welcomed a great many number of guests in the past in their times of most dire need. We can do that again," Foreign Ministry Deputy Undersecretary Halit Cevik was quoted as saying by state-run Anatolian news agency.         
                              At a third site, set up in fields close to the border but so far still empty, workers carried beds into tents on Saturday.

                               Radikal newspaper said Turkey would establish a buffer zone if migrant inflows from Syria exceed 10,000.

                                Just inside Syria, thousands more people were gathering close to the frontier, according to an activist helping coordinate the movement of refugees.

"The border area has turned practically into a buffer zone," said the man, who identified himself only as Abu Fadi. "Families have taken shelter under the trees and there are 7,000 to 10,000 people here now."

                            Human rights groups say security forces have killed more than 1,100 Syrian civilians in increasingly bloody efforts to suppress demonstrations calling for Assad's removal, more political freedoms and end to corruption and poverty.  
                           Damascus has banned most foreign correspondents from the country, making it difficult to verify accounts of events.

                        Appear to have become large or widespread enough to threaten Assad with the same fate as the toppled leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.