Reuters reports: A 19-year-old mother of two registered on Wednesday as the millionth refugee to flee Syria, part of an accelerating exodus that is piling pressure on neighbouring host countries.

Wearing a green headscarf and holding her young daughter, Bushra smiled nervously as she waited at Lebanon’s main registration centre in the northern city of Tripoli, which processes 800 Syrians a day.

“The situation is very bad for us. We can’t find work,” she said. “I live with 20 people in one room. We can’t find any other house as it is too expensive. We want to return to Syria. We wish for the crisis to be resolved.”

Syrians started trickling out of the country nearly two years ago when President Bashar al-Assad’s forces shot at pro-democracy protests inspired by Arab revolts elsewhere.

The uprising has since turned into an increasingly sectarian struggle between armed rebels and government soldiers and militias. An estimated 70,000 people have been killed.

Around half the refugees are children, most of them aged under 11, and the numbers leaving are mounting every week, the United Nations refugee agency said in statement. [Continue reading…]