Seven Refugees Drown Fleeing Syria for Cyprus

Seven Syrians, including two children, who tried to sail to Cyprus to escape the conflict in their homeland drowned after their boat sank earlier this month, a Turkish-Cypriot police source said Tuesday.

The source speaking in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is recognized only by Turkey, said the disaster took place on August 16 off the coast of northern Cyprus, near the Karpas peninsula.

Earlier the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement in Geneva that it was "concerned to learn of the deaths at sea of seven Syrians aboard a fishing boat that sank off the north coast of Cyprus late last week."

"The boat was carrying four men, one woman, and two children according to the coastguard."

The UNHCR said further that two people on board, believed to be people-smugglers, reached safety and were later arrested.

The Turkish-Cypriot police source said, however, that four people were arrested including two suspected smugglers.

The two people-smugglers were rescued by coastguard after having swam a long distance and were found suffering from extreme fatigue, the source said.

Refugees have fled to neighboring Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq but this was the "first case" of refugees attempting to cross to Cyprus, around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the shores of Syria, said UNCHR spokesman Melissa Fleming.

"It is hard to know if this is a trend," she told reporters in Geneva.

Some 25,000 people have been killed since an uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad's rule first erupted in March 2011, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The United Nations says more than 214,000 people have fled the fighting to neighboring countries, namely Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, while another 2.5 million are in need inside Syria.

Fleming said on Tuesday that the number of Syrians fleeing to a U.N.-run camp in northern Jordan has doubled in recent days, with more than 10,000 taking shelter there.

"The pace of arrivals from the Syrian border to the Zaatari camp in north Jordan has doubled in the past week," Fleming said, adding that more than 22,000 Syrians have taken shelter there since the camp opened on July 30.