UN Says Thousands of Syrian Refugees Are Fleeing to Iraq

30,000 in the past five days

BAGHDAD (AP) - In a mass exodus, around 30,000 Syrians have fled their homeland's bloody civil war over the past five days and streamed across the border into neighboring Iraq's northern self-ruled Kurdish region, the U.N. refugee agency said Monday. The huge influx of people, many of whom are Syrian Kurds escaping escalating violence in northeastern Syria, has left aid agencies as well as Iraqi Kurdistan's regional government scrambling to accommodate them all. The men, women and children who made the trek join some 1.9 million Syrians who already have found refuge abroad in what has become a massive strain on neighboring countries.