Syria l 11 000 people fled the country in one day

Until about 11,000 people fled Syria in 24 hours some of them desperately climbing barbed wire to Turkey on Friday to escape a fierce battle between rebels and government forces for control of a border town.

The exodus is a sign of the increasing ferocity in violence that has left more than 36,000 dead since March 2011. Despite the bloodshed, the embattled President Bashar Al Assad insisted that there is no civil war in his country during a rare television appearance, in which he said he was protecting the Syrians against "terrorism" supported from the abroad.

Syrian flow into neighboring countries of Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon was "the biggest we've had in a long time," said Panos Moumtzis, coordinator in the regional refugee agency UN. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people are coming out of Syria every day , and the recent increase boosts the figure recorded by the agency to more than 408,000, he said. Over a span of 24 hours that began on Thursday, Syrians crossed into Turkey 9000 -including 70 injuries and two who later died, said funcionaros of the UN. Jordan and Lebanon received another 1,000 refugees each.

 The increased flow to Turkey reached the village of Ras al-Ayn , in the predominantly Kurdish province oil of al-Hasaka, in the northeast of the country. The village is on the border, almost beside the Turkish people Ceylanpinar. On Thursday, the rebels took a border crossing between the two villages, said by telephone to The Associated Press Ceylanpinar Mayor Ismail Aslan. The rebels invaded the Friday three security complex in the village belonging to military intelligence agencies, intelligence and air force intelligence directorate, according to theSyrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition activist group based in Britain. The regime forces shelled rebel positions during Friday morning, said Aslan. Tanks regime also moved to join the battle, according to the Local Coordination Committees, another opposition activist group.

More than two million Syrian Kurds, marginalized for a long time, have remained largely oblivious to the fight, although some have participated in demonstrations against Assad . But like other minority groups, have been drawn increasingly to the fight.