BAGHDAD: Just days after the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry confronted Baghdad for continuing to grant Iran access to its airspace and saidIraq’s behavior was raising questions about its reliability as a partner.

Speaking to reporters during a previously unannounced trip to Baghdad, Kerry said that he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malikihad engaged in “a very spirited discussion” on the Iranian flights, which U.S. officials believe are ferrying weapons and fighters intended for the embattled Syrian government.

Kerry said the plane shipments — along with material being trucked across Iraqi territory from Iran to Syria — were helping PresidentBashar Assad’s regime cling to power by increasing their ability to strike at Syrian rebels and opposition figures demanding Assad’s ouster.

“I made it very clear that for those of us who are engaged in an effort to see President Assad step down and to see a democratic process take hold … anything that supports President Assad is problematic,” Kerry said at a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad after meeting separately with Maliki at his office. “And I made it very clear to the Prime Minister that the overflights from Iran are, in fact, helping to sustain President Assad and his regime.”

The overflights in Iraq have long been a source of contention between the U.S. and Iraq. Iraq and Iran claim the flights are carrying humanitarian goods, but American officials say they are confident that the planes are being used to arm the support the Assad regime. The administration is warning Iraq that unless action is taken, Iraq will be excluded from the international discussion about Syria’s political future.

U.S. officials say that in the absence of a complete ban on flights, Washington would at least like the planes to land and be inspected in Iraq to ensure that they are carrying humanitarian supplies. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton secured a pledge from Iraq to inspect the flights last year, but since then only two aircraft have been checked by Iraqi authorities, according to U.S. officials.

One senior U.S. official traveling with Kerry said the sheer number of overflights, which occur “close to daily,” along with shipments trucked to Syria from Iran through Iraq, was inconsistent with claims they are only carrying humanitarian supplies. The official said it was in Iraq’s interest to prevent the situation in Syria from deteriorating further, particularly as there are fears that al-Qaida-linked extremists may gain a foothold in the country as the Assad regime falters.

BEIRUT: Syrian state TV says 42 people have been killed and 84 wounded in a suicide bomb attack inside a mosque in Damascusthat also killed a top Sunni Muslim preacher and long time supporter of President Bashar Assad.

Thursday’s death of Sheik Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Butiremoves one of the few remaining pillars of support of the Alawite leader among the majority sect that has risen up against him.

Syrian TV says among those killed were al-Buti’s grandson. It did not elaborate.

BEIRUT: Syrian rebels freed 21 U.N. peacekeepers on Saturday after holding them hostage for four days, ending a sudden entanglement with the world body that earned fighters trying to oust President Bashar Assad a flood of negative publicity.

The episode is bound to prompt new questions about U.N. operations in war-torn Syria. The peacekeepers were part of a force that has spent four decades monitoring an Israeli-Syrian cease-fire without incident.

The Filipino peacekeepers crossed from Syria to safety in Jordan on Saturday afternoon, said Mokhtar Lamani, the Damascus representative of the U.N.-Arab League peace envoy to Syria.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed their release, and called on all parties in Syria to respect the peacekeepers’ freedom of movement.

The peacekeepers were seized Wednesday and were held in the village of Jamlah in southwestern Syria, near Jordan and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Their captors from the Martyrs of the Yarmouk Brigades initially said they would only release the hostages once Syrian troops withdrew from the area. In the days leading up to the abduction, rebels had overrun several regime checkpoints and apparently feared reprisals.

However, as the abduction made headlines, the rebels eventually dropped their demand and began negotiating a safe passage for the peacekeepers with U.N. officials. On Friday, a U.N. team tried to retrieve the hostages, but aborted the plan because of heavy regime shelling of the area.

On Saturday, another U.N. team headed toward Jamlah to try again, said a rebel spokesman, who spoke via Skype, insisting on anonymity for fear of reprisals.

He said the U.N. team aborted the mission because of fighting in the area, and that the rebels instead escorted the hostages to the Syrian-Jordanian border.

Lamani said the U.N. team was near Jamlah and was waiting for the rebels to hand over the hostages when the rebels changed their minds and instead drove the peacekeepers to the Jordanian border.

“We don’t know why (the rebels changed the plan), and there were lots of talks on this issue,” he said. “We were surprised when we got the news through a TV station that they had reached Jordan.”

Many rebel groups operate independently, despite efforts by the Syrian opposition to unify the fighters under one command. The abduction appeared to have been such a local initiative, and leaders of the political opposition repeatedly urged the Jamlah rebels to free the hostages.

On Friday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland warned the rebels that holding the peacekeepers “is not good for them, it’s not good for their reputation.”

The peacekeepers are part of a U.N. monitoring mission known as UNDOF. It was set up in 1974, seven years after Israel captured the plateau and a year after it managed to push back Syrian troops trying to recapture the territory in another regional war.

The U.N. monitors have helped enforce a stable truce between Israel and Syria.

But in recent months, Syrian mortar shells overshooting their target have repeatedly hit the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. In Israel’s most direct involvement so far, Israeli warplanes struck inside Syria in January, according to U.S. officials who said the target was a convoy carrying anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia allied with Assad and Iran.

Israeli officials have expressed concern that the violence might prompt UNDOF to end its mission.

On Friday, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said “the mission in the Golan needs to review its security arrangements and it has been doing that.”

He said the mission has been looking at different scenarios and arrangements on how to operate “in these new rather difficult and challenging circumstances.”

It was the first time that Filipino peacekeepers, of whom 600 are deployed worldwide and 333 in the Golan Heights, have been seized. The incident has prompted President Benigno Aquino III to review the Philippines’ contributions to U.N. peacekeeping operations.

The Syria conflict began two years ago, starting with largely peaceful protests against Assad. A harsh regime crackdown triggered an armed insurgency that has turned into a full-scale civil war.

The U.N. estimates that the conflict has claimed more than 70,000 lives and forced nearly 4 million people from their homes. The fighting has devastated large areas of the country.

BAGHDAD: Dozens of Syrian soldiers who had crossed intoIraq for refuge were ambushed Monday with bombs, gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in an attack that killed 48 of them and heightened concerns that the country could be drawn into Syria’s civil war.

The fact that the soldiers were on Iraqi soil at all raises questions about Baghdad’s apparent willingness to quietly aid the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The well-coordinated attack, which Iraqi officials blamed on al-Qaida’s Iraq arm, also suggests possible coordination between the militant group and its ideological allies in Syria who rank among the rebels’ most potent fighters.

Iraqi officials said the Syrians had sought refuge through the Rabiya border crossing in northern Iraq during recent clashes with rebels and were being escorted back home through a different crossing farther south when the ambush occurred. Their convoy was struck near Akashat, not far from the Syrian border.

Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Iraq’s prime minister, provided the death toll and said nine Iraqi soldiers were also killed. The Syrians had been disarmed and included some who were wounded, he told The Associated Press.

He said the soldiers had been allowed into Iraq only on humanitarian grounds and insisted thatBaghdad was not picking sides in the Syrian conflict.

“We do not want more soldiers to cross our borders and we do not want to be part of the problem,” al-Moussawi said. “We do not support any group against the other in Syria.”

The Iraqi Defense Ministry said 10 additional Syrians were wounded in the assault. In a statement, it warned all parties in the Syrian war against bringing the fight into Iraq, saying its response will be “firm and tough.”

Iraqi officials who provided details of the attack described a carefully orchestrated assault on the Syrians’ convoy, with a senior military intelligence official saying the attackers appeared to have been tipped off ahead of time.

He and another Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information, said it was unlikely that Syrian rebels had managed to cross into Iraq to carry out the attack.

“This attack bears the hallmarks of the al-Qaida terrorist organization,” said Jassim al-Halbousi, provincial council member in Anbar, the restive western region where the attack happened. “The borders should be secured at the highest level of alert.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told the AP last week that he feared a victory for rebels in the Syrian civil war would create a new extremist haven and destabilize the wider Middle East, sparking sectarian wars in his own country and in Lebanon.

His comments reflect fears by many Shiite Muslims that Sunni Muslims would come to dominate Syria should Assad be toppled. Assad’s regime is backed by Shiite powerhouse Iran, which has been building ties with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad in recent years.

The war in Syria has sharp sectarian overtones, with predominantly Sunni rebels fighting a regime dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Rebel groups have increasingly embraced radical Islamic ideologies, and some of their greatest battlefield successes have been carried out by Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization and that it claims has links to al-Qaida.

Iraq’s government has faced more than two months of protests from Sunni Muslims angry over perceived discrimination. Anbar province has been the epicenter for the rallies.

Toby Dodge, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics, said the fact that Syrian soldiers had been welcomed into Iraq at all is worrying.

AMMAN, Jordan: Syria’s president harshly criticized U.S. and British aid to rebels and set harsh terms for talking to his opponents in a newspaper interview published Sunday, as fighting raged across the country.

On the battlefield, rebels made significant gains in the heavily contested northeastern Syrian, capturing a police academy complex west of Aleppo and storming the central prison in the city of Raqqa, as well as a border crossing along Syria’s frontier with Iraq, activists said.

President Bashar Assad took a tough line against his opponents in the interview with London’s Sunday Times, dialing back earlier hints of flexibility about talks.

He said he is ready for dialogue with armed rebels and militants, but only if they surrender their weapons. Recently his foreign minister offered such talks but left the question of laying down arms unanswered. Assad’s regime often refers to rebels as “terrorists.”

“We are ready to negotiate with anyone, including militants who surrender their arms. We are not going to deal with terrorists who are determined to carry weapons, to terrorize people, to kill civilians, to attack public places or private enterprise and to destroy the country,” Assad said. “We fight terrorism.”

Most opposition groups have rejected talks with Assad’s regime, with some demanding that he resign before talks can begin.

Assad said that he would not step down or go into exile. “No patriotic person will think about living outside his country. I am like any other patriotic Syrian,” he said.

The interview was conducted in Damascus last week and was published Sunday, coinciding with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s first foreign tour.

Kerry met with Syrian rebels in Italy Thursday. He has announced a $60 million package of non-lethal U.S. aid to the rebels.

Assad said the “intelligence, communication and financial assistance being provided is very lethal.”

Assad also bitterly criticized Britain. He said instead of pushing for peace talks, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s “naive, confused, unrealistic” government was trying to end a European Union arms embargo so that the rebels can be supplied with weapons.

“We do not expect an arsonist to be a firefighter,” he said, dismissing any notion that Britain could help end the civil war, which has killed more than 70,000 people.

“How can we ask Britain to play a role while it is determined to militarize the problem? How can we expect them to make the violence less while they want to send military supply to the terrorists?” he asked.

On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague promised to increase support for the Syrian opposition, including equipment supplies and humanitarian assistance.

Assad said Hague was misguided in his offer of assistance to rebels. “The British government wants to send military aid to moderate groups in Syria, knowing all too well that such moderate groups do not exist in Syria,” he said.

“We all know that we are now fighting al-Qaida, or Jabhat al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaida, and other groups of people indoctrinated with extreme ideologies,” he said.

Assad warned that arming the rebels would have grave consequences.

“Syria lies at the fault line geographically, politically, socially and ideologically. So playing with this fault line will have serious repercussions all over the Middle East,” he said.

He vowed to avenge from Israel for an airstrike on a suspected site — which Syria said was a research center — in Damascus last month.

“Retaliation does not mean missile for missile or bullet for bullet,” he said. “Our own way does not have to be announced.”

BEIRUT: A ferocious battle on the outskirts of the northern city of Raqa, near the Turkish border, killed dozens of Syrian troops and rebel fighters on Saturday, a watchdog reported.”Fierce clashes pitting rebel fighters from several battalions against regular troops have raged since dawn on the outskirts of Raqa city,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Army troops shelled several city neighbourhoods, as well as the outskirts, while the clashes left dozens of troops and rebels dead,” the Britain-based group said without giving exact numbers.”Explosions could be heard in the city, and towers of smoke could be seen rising into the sky.

Both the Observatory and activists in Raqa said the army was using helicopters to strafe rebels in some parts of the city, in a rare escalation of violence in the provincial capital.Raqa city is strategically located near Syria’s northern border with Turkey. Residents say it has become home to thousands of people forced to flee their homes in other war-torn parts of Syria.

“A large number of people were forced by mortar attacks on their district to flee their homes in the Masaken Shuhada area” of the city, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.”Because of the large number of civilians who have sought shelter in Raqa from other parts of Syria, the rebel Free Syrian Army had an agreement not to assault the city,” he told AFP.”Saturday’s battle was a rare but intense escalation.”

PARIS: New U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has held his first official meeting with France’s leadership amid increasing efforts by both countries to bolster Syria’s opposition.

Kerry met Wednesday with French President Francois Hollande in Paris, chatting in French on the front steps of the Elysee Palace.

The war in Syria and Iran’s nuclear program have topped the agenda of Kerry’s tour of Europe and the Middle East.

Officials in the United States and Europe said Tuesday the U.S. administration is nearing a decision on whether to provide non-lethal assistance to carefully vetted fighters opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

France, Syria’s onetime colonial ruler, is also seeking ways to provide more support for Syria’s opposition coalition after two years of fighting Assad’s government crackdown.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan received applause Sunday at a government communications forum in theUnited Arab Emirates, which has joined other Gulf nations in backing Syrian rebels seeking to topplePresident Bashar Assad.

Erdogan urged world leaders to denounce attacks on civilians by the Syrian regime. He described Assad as a “mute devil” for exercising brutality against Syrians while not pressing harder to challenge Israel over its occupation of the Golan Heights.

Israel captured the strategic plateau in 1967. Despite hostility between the two countries, Israel and Syria have not gone to war since 1973.

DAMASCUS, Syria: A car bombing near Syria’s ruling party headquarters in Damascus killed 53 people on Thursday, according to state media, while mortar rounds exploded near the army’s central command in the city.

It was the third straight day of attacks on the center of the capital, among the deepest and fiercest on the heart of Bashar Assad’s seat of power during the civil war.

The car bombing was the deadliest attack inside Damascus in nine months and within hours, two other bombings and a mortar attack on the military compound followed.

While no one group has claimed responsibility, the attacks suggest that rebel fighters who have gotten bogged down in their attempts to storm the capital are resorting to guerrilla tactics to loosen Assad’s grip on the capital.

The day’s deadliest attack struck a main street on the edge of central Mazraa neighborhood, near the headquarters of Assad’s Baath party and the Russian Embassy, as well as a mosque, a hospital and a school.

TV footage of the blast site showed firemen dousing a flaming car with hoses and lifeless and dismembered bodies blown into the grass of a nearby park. The state news service, SANA, published photos showing a large crater in the middle of the rubble-strewn street and charred cars holding blackened bodies.

Witnesses at the scene said a car exploded at a security checkpoint between the Russian Embassy and the central headquarters of Assad’s ruling party.

“It was huge. Everything in the shop turned upside down,” one local resident said. He said three of his employees were injured by flying glass that killed a young girl who was walking by when the blast hit.

“I pulled her inside the shop but she was almost gone. We couldn’t save her. She was hit in the stomach and head,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution for speaking with foreign media.

Ambulances rushed to the scene of the blast, which shattered windows and sent up a huge cloud of smoke visible throughout much of the city, witnesses said.

State TV called it a “terrorist” attack by a suicide bomber. It said at least 53 people were killed and more than 200 wounded.

The Britain-based activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 42 people were killed, most of them civilians. Some members of the Syrian security forces were also killed, it said.

There was no way to immediately reconcile the differing death tolls.

The bombing appeared to be the second most deadly in the Syrian capital since the uprising against Assad began 23 months ago. Fifty-five people were killed in the first, a double suicide bombing outside of an intelligence building in May, 2012.

The most extreme of Syria’s rebel groups, Jabhat al-Nusra, claimed responsibility for that and other bombings that have struck targets associated with the regime but also killed civilians.

Such tactics have galvanized Assad’s supporters and made many other Syrians distrustful of the rebel movement as a whole, most of whose fighting groups do not use such tactics.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday’s attack.

Russia’s state owned RIA Novosti news agency quoted a Russian Embassy official as saying the Embassy building had been damaged in the blast but no one was hurt.

Among those wounded by flying glass was Nayef Hawatmeh, the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical Damascus-based Palestinian group.

An official at his office, about 500 yards from the site of the explosion, said Hawatmeh was wounded in the hands and face from flying glass. He was taken to hospital and later released.

In a separate attack, Syrian state TV said mortar shells exploded near the Syrian Army General Command in central Damascus, causing no casualties. The station said the building was empty because it was under renovation.

The Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two mortar rounds struck near the building but did not report casualties.

On Wednesday, two mortar shells exploded next to a soccer stadium in Damascus, killing one player. The day before, two mortar shells blew up near one of Assad’s three palaces in the city, causing only material damage.

Between the car bomb and the mortar attack near the army command, a security official reported another blast in the capital’s northeastern Barzeh neighborhood. He had no other information and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of anti-regime activists inside Syria, said two car bombs had exploded near security centers in Barzeh, followed by intense clashes between rebels and security forces.

Syrian state media also reported that security forces in Damascus had arrested a second, would-be suicide bomber driving a car full of explosives near the site of the Mazraa bombing.

Damascus has so far mostly avoided the large-scale violence that has destroyed other Syrian cities, though deadly car bombings have targeted government buildings in the capital.

In May 2012, twin car bombs exploded outside a military intelligence building, killing 55 people in the deadliest attack against a regime target in the capital since the uprising began 23 months ago.

And in July, rebels detonated explosives inside a high-level crisis meeting in Damascus that killed four top regime officials, including Assad’s brother-in-law and the defense minister.

Following that attack, rebel groups who have established footholds in suburbs of the capital pushed in, clashing with government forces for more than a week before being routed and pushed out.

Since then, government jets have heavily bombed rebel-held suburbs and rebels have managed only small incursions on the city’s south and east sides.

In the southern town of Daraa, where Syria’s uprising began nearly two years ago, the Observatory said the 18 people killed in the airstrike included eight rebel fighters, three medics, one woman and one young girl.

A video posted online said to be of the event showed the bodies of dead and wounded people being loaded in to the back of trucks and moved to another location. Some were bloody and had bandaged heads, while others were carried out on stretchers.

Syria’s conflict began in March 2011 with political protests against the government and has since evolved into a civil war between Assad’s regime and hundreds of rebel groups seeking to topple it. The U.N. says some 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict so far.

International diplomacy has failed to slow the fighting.

On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said his message to Assad is that “it is time to go.”

He said the senseless killing must be brought to an end through a credible political process leading to a transition in Syria.

He also called on Assad to respond to a dialogue offer made recently by Syrian opposition chief Mouaz al-Khatib.

“A political settlement, a political agreement on a transition is the way forward in Syria to bring to an end this terrible and unacceptable loss of life.”

Al-Khatib has said he is open to talks with the regime that could pave the way for Assad’s departure, but that the Syrian leader must first release tens of thousands of detainees. The government has refused.

BEIRUT: A Syrian missile strike leveled a block of buildings in an impoverished district of Aleppo on Tuesday, killing at least 33 people, almost half of them children, anti-regime activists said.

Many were trapped under the rubble of destroyed houses and piles of concrete and the death toll could still rise further if more bodies are uncovered.

The apparent ground-to-ground missile attack struck a quiet area that has been held by anti-regime fighters for many months, a reminder of how difficult it is for the opposition to defend territory in the face of the regime’s far superior weaponry.

In the capital Damascus, state-run news agency SANA said two mortars exploded near one ofPresident Bashar Assad’s palaces. It dealt a symbolic blow to the embattled leader, who has tried to maintain an image as the head of a functioning state even as rebels edge closer to the heart of his seat of power.

No casualties were reported and it was unclear whether Assad was in the palace. He has two others in the city.

The attack was the first confirmed strike close to a presidential palace and another sign that the civil war is seeping into areas of the capital once considered safe.

“This is a clear message to the regime that nowhere is safe from now on,” said Khaled al-Shami, an activist in Damascus reached via Skype. “The fact that they had to announce it means they can no longer hide what is happening in Damascus.”

The news service, SANA, said “terrorists” fired the rounds that struck near the southern wall of the Tishreen palace in the capital’s northwestern Muhajireen district. The government refers to anti-government fighters as “terrorists.”

Assad often uses the Tishrin palace to receive dignitaries and as a guest house for foreign officials during their visits to Syria.

The capital has largely been spared the violence that has left other cities in ruins. For weeks, however, rebels who have established footholds in the suburbs have been pushing closer to the heart of Damascus from the eastern and southern outskirts, clashing with government forces.

Rebels have claimed to fire rockets at presidential palaces in Damascus before, but this strike was the first confirmed by the government.

In the northern city of Aleppo, anti-regime activists said a missile strike flattened a stretch of buildings and killed at least 33 people. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they included 14 children and five women.

Amateur videos posted online showed scores of men combing through the rubble of destroyed buildings in the poor Jabal Badro neighborhood to find those trapped beneath it.

“Allahu Akbar,” or God is great, they shout as a group of men lift up a body wrapped in a pink blanket.

One man swung a sledgehammer to break through concrete while a bulldozer hauled off rubble. In another video, a man covered in grey dust struggled under pile of concrete.

The videos appeared authentic and corresponded with other Associated Press reporting.

The Jabal Badro district has been under rebel control for months and had been largely quiet until Tuesday’s attack.

The strike was the latest salvo in a fierce and bloody 7-month battle for Syria’s largest city and economic center, a key prize in the civil war.

Rebels have slowly expanded their control over parts of Aleppo since first storming it last summer. The city is now divided between rebel- and regime-controlled zones.

Rebel forces have been trying for weeks to capture Aleppo’s international airport and two military air bases nearby, while the government is bringing in reinforcements from areas it still controls further south and regularly bombing rebel areas from the air.

The activist group Aleppo Media Center said more than 40 were killed and published the names of 21 off them on its Facebook page. There was no way to reconcile the differing tolls.

Both the Observatory and AMC groups said the strike appeared to be from a ground-to-ground missile. The Syrian government did not comment.

Activist Mohammed al-Khatib of the AMC said via Skype that the death toll could rise further as residents search the site for more bodies.

“There are still lots of people missing from the area,” he said.

He said the strike appeared to be from a large ground-to-ground missile because of the scale of the destruction and because residents did not report hearing a fighter jet, as they usually do during airstrikes.

Although Assad’s forces regularly shell and launch airstrikes on areas held by anti-government rebels, their use of large missiles has been limited.

In December, U.S. and NATO officials confirmed rebel reports that Syrian forces had fired Scud missiles at rebel areas in the north. That was the last confirmed use of such weapons.

Also Tuesday, rebels clashed with government forces near Aleppo’s international airport and the Kweiras military airport nearby, the Observatory said. Clashes have halted air traffic to the two airports for weeks, since rebels launched their offensive to try to capture them.

The Observatory also reported government shelling, airstrikes and clashes between government forces and rebels east and south of Damascus.

Seven people were killed in rocket strikes on the eastern suburb of Kafar Batna and five died in a car bombing in Jdeidat al-Fadel, southwest of the capital, it said.

The U.N. says some 70,000 have been killed since the uprising against Assad’s authoritarian rule began in March 2011. The violence has spread humanitarian suffering across much of Syria.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance has quadrupled since June last year.

“Just in the last two months, over 250,000 people have fled into neighboring countries. These numbers, they are not sustainable,” she said at a press conference in Geneva.

The U.N. says more than 870,000 Syrians have fled to neighboring countries since the beginning of the conflict, with the majority seeking refuge in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.

The United States announced Tuesday it was providing an addition $19 million in humanitarian assistance in response to urgent needs in Syria.

The announcement made in Geneva by Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, brings the United States’ total contribution of humanitarian support in response to this crisis to nearly $385 million.

On January 29, President Barack Obama announced an additional $155 million to help those suffering inside Syria and refugees in the neighboring countries.

The U.N. warned in a report released Monday that contaminated water and poor hygiene in populated areas have led to an increase in waterborne diseases such as Hepatitis A and Typhoid.

The World Health Organization said the health situation on the ground is rapidly deteriorating, with an estimated 2,500 people in the northeastern Deir el-Zour province infected with Typhoid and 14,000 cases of Leishmania, a parasite responsible for an infectious and often debilitating disease, in Hassakeh province.