REPORT: Syrian army recaptures bases in Latakia, refugees pour into Iraq

This comes day after UN inspectors arrived in Damascus to Sunday to investigate the alleged use of chemical weapons, as Syria's government vowed to cooperate fully with them.

Plainclothes security officers whisked away the 20-member team from a media scrum as they arrived at their five-star hotel in the heart of the Syrian capital.

The team is led by Swedish chemical-weapons expert Ake Sellstrom.

Its mission will be limited to investigating the alleged use of chemical weapons in three areas - in particular the March 19 attack in Khan al-Assal that President Bashar Assad blames on rebels.

The other two sites have been kept secret.

Assad's government and the rebels fighting to topple him each say the other side has used chemical weapons during the 28-month conflict.

Assad had refused to allow a broader UN investigation into allegations of chemical use, including charges that have been leveled by the United States, Britain and France.

Refugee crisis:

More than 20,000 Syrian refugees have entered northern Iraq since Thursday in one of the largest crossings in the more than two-year-old conflict and the influx is continuing, the United Nations said on Monday.
   
Syrians began pouring into the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq last Thursday, taking advantage of a new bridge along the largely closed border, the U.N. says.
   
"It looks like the total from last Thursday to now is somewhere in the region of 20,000 or more coming across," Adrian Edwards of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said. "If not the biggest influx across the border at a single time then it is among the largest in the whole Syria crisis."
   
Hundreds of Syrians fleeing fighting in Aleppo and other parts of northern Syria were massed along the Tigris River on Monday near the pontoon crossing, UNHCR staff said.



LBCI/AP


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