Number of Syrian refugees tops three million mark: UN

More than three million Syrians have fled the civil war ravaging their country to become refugees - a million of them in the past year alone, the United Nations said Aug. 29.

"Syria's intensifying refugee crisis will today surpass a record three million people," the U.N.'s refugee agency said in a statement, adding that the number did not include hundreds of thousands of others who fled without registering as refugees.

Less than a year ago, the number of registered Syrian refugees stood at two million, UNHCR said, pointing to reports of "increasingly horrifying conditions inside the country" to explain the surge.

It described "cities where populations are surrounded, people are going hungry and civilians are being targeted or indiscriminately killed." The increasingly fragmented conflict raging in Syria has claimed more than 191,000 lives since erupting in March 2011.

In addition to the refugees, the violence has also displaced 6.5 million people within the country, meaning that nearly 50 percent of all Syrians have been forced to flee their homes, UNHCR said.

Over half of all those who have been uprooted are children, it lamented. Most of the Syrians have found their way to neighbouring countries, with Lebanon and Turkey hosting more than one million refugees.

The strain on the host countries' economies, infrastructures and resources is "enormous", UNHCR stressed, adding that nearly 40 percent of the refugees were living in sub-standard conditions.

'Largest operation of history'

The agency said its work to help the Syrian refugees now marked the largest operation in its 64-year-history.

"The Syrian crisis has become the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era, yet the world is failing...