The United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday that more than 21,000 people had arrived in Lebanon this month fleeing the worst bloodshed in Syria since Bashar al-Assad's ousting.
A Syrian committee investigating the wave of sectarian killings in the heartland of the country's Alawite minority said Tuesday that it had collected scores of accounts of the violence, with its probe ongoing.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported "21,637 new arrivals from Syria" into northern Lebanon, in a report citing figures provided by Lebanese authorities and the Lebanese Red Cross.
For days from March 6, Syria's Mediterranean coast was gripped by mass killings, mainly targeting the Alawite community, to which Assad's family belongs.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some 1,600 civilians, mostly Alawites, were killed, accusing security forces and allied groups of participating in "field executions, forced displacement and burning of homes", with entire families killed, including women, children and the elderly.
The Syrian authorities have accused armed Assad supporters of starting the violence by staging attacks on the new security forces, with military reinforcements then sent to the areas.
UNHCR said that "fleeing families are continuing to cross unofficial border crossing points including through rivers on foot, and are arriving exhausted, traumatised, and hungry".
It also reported "ongoing reports of insecurity hampering people's movements before they reach Lebanon".
Around 390 Lebanese families were also among the recent arrivals, it said.
- Collecting testimony -
Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led the Sunni Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that spearheaded Assad's overthrow, has vowed to prosecute those behind the "bloodshed of civilians", and set up the fact-finding committee.
Committee spokesman Yasser al-Farhan said Tuesday that the body had recorded "more than 95 testimonies" and received "more than 30 oral and written reports through direct communication", with some messages still being received electronically.
He said the committee began field work on March 14 in Latakia province, where its members met with local and security officials, and interviewed "hundreds of family members and witnesses".
The committee has examined "93 pieces of digital evidence", he said, adding that investigations were still ongoing and that it was too early to provide details or results.
Farhan also said the body, which plans to go to other areas including Tartus, met with UN rights officials and investigators.
The committee has not experienced any "attack from regime remnants or any party, or any threat", he said, but the area was still dangerous due to the presence of "outlaws implicated in crimes against humanity".
"We are waiting for the adoption of a law on transitional justice in Syria", Farhan said, referring to pledges to prosecute the crimes of Assad's government, whose brutal repression of peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011 triggered Syria's civil war.
Many Syrians, he added, believed that "a special national court" should be established "to prosecute those involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity".
