UN in record Syria aid appeal as crisis deepens

The United Nations launched a record $5.2-billion aid appeal for Syria yesterday as regime forces sought to capitalise on recent victories over the rebels, sending reinforcements to battlefields Homs and Aleppo.
The world body, meanwhile, scrambled to find replacement troops for its peacekeeping mission on the Golan Heights after heavy fighting between regime forces and rebels near its headquarters on Thursday prompted Austria to announce it was pulling out.
The sum sought by the UN by far overshadows the $2.2 billion (1.7 billion euros) that it appealed for in 2003 to help cope with the crisis sparked by the war in Iraq.
But UN officials said the number of people in need inside Syria and in neighbouring countries was set to spiral as the conflict drags on for a third year.
The world body said that a total of $3.8 billion was needed to help Syrian refugees who have spilled across the country's borders to escape fighting in their homeland.
The figure for operations inside Syria, meanwhile, was $1.4 billion.
More than 94,000 people have been killed and some 1.6 million Syrians have fled the country since the civil war began in March 2011 after a crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
The number of refugees is expected to reach at least 3.45 million by the end of this year, according to the UN appeal.
Within the country, a total of 6.8 million people are forecast to need aid this year, the majority of them people who have been forced to flee their homes because of the fighting.
Syria's pre-war population was 20.8 million.
Syrian government forces were trying to mop up final pockets of rebel resistance north of Qusayr, the border town which they retook on Wednesday bolstered by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.