DESPERATE SYRIANS FLEE AMID EXPECTED US MILITARY STRIKE.
AS UN inspectors left Syria, they were followed out of the war-torn country by a continuous flow of families desperate to flee the threat of US strikes.
Cars filled with weary-looking passengers, their open boots packed to the brim with bags and suitcases crossed the Masnaa border post in a constant, though not massive, exodus as a US intervention over a suspected gas attack appeared increasingly imminent.
The threat of strikes on Syrian army targets in Damascus and surrounding areas seemingly became more likely as UN inspectors probing last week's alleged gas attack left Syria and flew out of Lebanon early Saturday.
The 13 UN inspectors, led by Ake Sellstrom, are now believed to have arrived in the Netherlands, where samples they collected in Syria are expected to be repackaged and sent to laboratories around Europe. The goal will be to check them for traces of poison gas that may have been unleashed during a bombardment of a Damascus suburb.
The team on Friday carried out a fourth and final day of inspection as they sought to determine precisely what happened in the attack on August 21.
Tests on the samples are expected to take days, but UN disarmament chief Angela Kane is to brief Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon later on Saturday on the investigation.
US President Barack Obama meets with his national security staff to discuss the situation in Syria in the Situation Room of the White House on Friday. Picture: AP/The White House
Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi said the army is ready for potential foreign strikes against the country.
"The Syrian army is fully ready, its finger on the trigger to face any challenge or scenario that they want to carry out," he said in a written statement aired on state television on Saturday.
Damascus has increased the rhetoric as the world waits to see if the United States and others decide to strike it in retaliation for the suspected gas attack.
A Syrian security official who wished to remain anonymous said the country was expecting an assault "at any moment," adding authorities were ready to retaliate.
Syrian refugees pass through the Turkish Cilvegozu gate border. UN chemical weapons experts also have left Syria and crossed into neighbouring Lebanon ahead of an expected military strike. Picture: AP
US President Barack Obama said on Friday that his administration was looking at the possibility of a "limited, narrow act" over the suspected attack that reportedly killed hundreds, which Washington blames on the regime.
"I'm going to rent a house near Anjar (in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa valley) and we will wait for things to calm down," said Abu Malek, a 31-year-old Syrian who works in an aluminium factory near the capital Damascus.
Carrying a carton of supplies handed over by a Qatari NGO that welcomes Syrian refugees some 300 metres from the border post, he said people in his home country were "terrified".
"Those who can, leave. But many people can't."
Scores of Syrian asylum seekers have landed in southern Italy on two boats carring a total of around 230 people, officials say. The first boat, a fishing vessel, carried 130 people including 21 women and 28 children under the age of six, the border guard said in a statement following Saturday's arrivals.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed as "nonsense" claims that the Syria regime has used chemical weapons and he has demanded that the United States provide proof.
A UN convoy of vehicles drives through the Lebanese village of Taanayel after crossing into Lebanon from Syria on August 31. The team of UN inspectors left Damascus after completing their probe into a suspected chemical weapons attack near Damascus. Picture: AFP
Mr Putin rejected communications intercepts as evidence, saying that they cannot be used to take "fundamental decisions" like using military force on Syria.
"Common sense speaks for itself," he told journalists in Vladivostok when asked about claims that the Syrian army used chemical weapons.
"Syrian government troops are on the offensive and have surrounded the opposition in several regions. In these conditions, to give a trump card to those who are calling for a military intervention is utter nonsense.
"Regarding the position of our American colleagues, friends, who affirm that government troops used weapons of mass destruction, in this case chemical weapons, and say that they have proof, well, let them show it to the United Nations inspectors and the Security Council," he said.
Mr Obama said on Friday he had taken no "final decision" on striking Syria, but that the world could not accept the gassing of women and children.
The threat of a military strike comes on top of months of violence in a civil war that has seen more than 100,000 people die.
Most Syrians of those crossing the border had the means and money to do so. Not so for Aicha, a 60-year-old woman wearing a black veil, her lower jaw almost toothless.
Sitting in the shade with her daughter-in-law, she said she arrived on Friday to accompany her son who travelled on to Turkey to find work, and intended to return to Damascus if she could find transport.
"I'm scared, we're all scared of US strikes, but what can we do? We are dependent on God," she sighed.
"We are neutral in this war, we don't understand anything about what is going on. We have lost our house and we are living with friends in another area."
Majida, her 33-year-old daughter-in-law, added that they would like to stay in Lebanon.
"But we don't have any money, we have nowhere to go. So we have to go back," she said.
For almost a year, the Qatari NGO Al Asmah, funded by rich families from the Arab state, has set up a centre in Masnaa to welcome Syrian refugees.
Flashing their Syrian identity cards, refugees are able to get cartons of food and other useful items.
"Over the past few days, since the US threats, the number of families that we see has doubled," said director Omar Mohammed Koeis.
"We now provide for 60 to 70 families a day."
In a nearby parking lot, Amer Abed, a 27-year-old unemployed man who came from a Damascus suburb, was emptying the contents of the overflowing boot of an old Mercedes car into a van.
Weary women got out of the car, holding young, surprised-looking children in their arms.
"I want these US strikes to happen," he said to several foreign journalists.
"You journalists, and the entire world, are watching our country go up in flames without doing anything. Hate has taken over our hearts.
"I want these strikes because if Americans attack us and kill us once and for all, then maybe the Arabs will unite to defend us."
A US intelligence report released on Friday concluded the regime launched a chemical onslaught in the suburbs of Damascus last week, killing 1429 people, including at least 426 children.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said the report gathered evidence from thousands of sources and the intelligence community has ''high confidence'' the regime was responsible for the attack.
Calling Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons a threat to US national security, US President Barack Obama said the response would be "narrow" and "limited", having considered a "wide range of options".
A "solely military solution" would not be found to the conflict in Syria," he said.
"This kind of attack is a challenge to the world," he said, adding that it increases the risk chemical weapons will be used in the future and against the United States.
Mr Obama said he understood that there was widespread war fatigue both in the United States, Britain and elsewhere, but that did not absolve nations of their responsibilities.
"Ultimately, we don't want the world to be paralysed. And frankly, you know, part of the challenge that we end up with here is that a lot of people think something should be done, but nobody wants to do it,'' he said.
Mr Obama also slammed the "incapacity'' of the UN Security Council to act on Syria, and warned the world must not be "paralysed'' on responding to a chemical weapons attack.
"What we have seen so far at least is an incapacity at this point for the Security Council to move forward in the face of a clear violation of international norms,'' Mr Obama said, as he met Baltic leaders at the White House.
Syria said that the US intelligence report was ''entirely fabricated''.
''What the US administration describes as irrefutable evidence ... is nothing but tired legends that the terrorists have been circulating for more than a week, with their share of lies and entirely fabricated stories,'' a foreign ministry statement read out on state television said.
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