ANKARA, Turkey, July 5 (UPI) -- The refugee crisis across the Middle East and northern and East Africa is worsening as conflict forces tens of thousands of people out of their homelands.
Amid continuing battles in Libya between entrenched leader Moammar Gadhafi and rebel forces backed by a Western coalition and oil-rich Arab states, European nations are having to deal with refugees coming by sea, air, overland through eastern Mediterranean and via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco.
Less publicized but more worrying for Western partners in Turkey and the Middle East is a continuing flood of mostly women and children fleeing the military crackdown in Syria. The Turkish Red Crescent Society estimated 17,000 Syrians were awaiting entry, to add to more than 10,000 refugees already in government-sponsored camps near the frontier.
Thousands more have crossed a porous Turkish-Syrian border and present a humanitarian and security headache for Ankara, which is already host to several million refugees from the war in Iraq and before that the Islamic revolution and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and the 1990-91 Gulf war.
Officials, fearful of the Syrian crisis exacerbating the refugee influx, initially told Western donors they didn't need overseas aid as they hoped to send the displaced persons back to Syria. But that was several months ago and the Syrians keep coming. Officials warned Turkey could run out of resources to take care of more Syrian refugees.
Turkey has also faced attempts by Africans, including Libyan refugees, to enter via its vast southern Mediterranean shore. The numbers of those arrested for illegal entry rose in the past two months.
Cross-border incursions from Libya to neighboring Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Chad, Nigeria and southern Sudan also rose dramatically as the Libyan conflict raged in June.
Last month, Italy reached accords with Libyan National Transition Council after the numbers of refugees reaching Lampedusa, part of Italy but geographically closer to Tunisia, swelled to more than 30,000. The accord's aim of getting rebel help to reduce the numbers of arrivals was seen by analysts as unrealistic and impossible to achieve.
Even tougher was the challenge posed to southern and eastern African states bearing the brunt of conflicts in Libya, Somalia and unrest in Egypt since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
"One need only look at the social and economic repercussions of the still unresolved predicament of Iraqi refugees to see the urgency of keeping the current situations from escalating into another protracted refugee crisis," Chris Ulack said in a report on the Foreign Policy Web site.
"The consequences of a prolonged refugee situation could be dire, especially as many of the countries to which the people are fleeing allow few -- if any -- rights, benefits or protection for refugees," Ulack said.
The Libyan refugee situation is complicated by the large number of third-country nationals who are attempting to flee to Europe by boat. An al-Jazeera report cited 1,400 deaths at sea, mostly of people fleeing Libya since the government crackdown began in February.
A U.N. appeal to ships in the Mediterranean to look out for crude vessels that might be carrying refugees from Africa has gone mostly unheeded.
In addition to these issues of concern are the estimated 250,000 internally displaced people still inside of Libya, Ulack said.
"Oftentimes, the internally displaced are the most vulnerable as it is extremely difficult to provide food and supplies to those trapped inside a conflict zone," he added.
Analysts citing the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said Libya faced a major humanitarian crisis irrespective of the outcome of the conflict.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned in June the Horn of Africa, which includes Somalia and Djibouti, faced a near-famine situation mainly because of drought.
"Two consecutive poor rainy seasons have resulted in one of the driest years since 1950-51 in many pastoral zones," the U.N. office said. "There is no likelihood of improvement until 2012."
More than 10 million people are affected -- including 117,000 in Djibouti, 3.2 million each in Ethiopia and Kenya, 2.6 million in Somalia and 883,000 in Uganda -- and the situation is quickly deteriorating, spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said.
A U.N. "food security" map of the region indicated parts of Kenya and Somalia are one step away from being classified as "catastrophe-famine," the most severe category.
