BEIRUT: Syrian troops pushed toward the Lebanese border Sunday, intensifying their crackdown on popular protests in towns in central Syria, as hundreds of Syrians crossed into Lebanon.
Gunfire rattled in central Syrian towns overnight, activists said, while a security source told The Daily Star that more than a thousand people, some wounded, have crossed into Lebanon since Thursday.

More than 400 people crossed the border into Lebanon Saturday night, according to the source, and more than 20 wounded were taken to hospitals in the north.
One military source said Saturday that six wounded Syrians, who had crossed earlier in the weekend and underwent major surgery at a hospital in Akkar, were soldiers who told doctors that they had defied Syrian authorities’ orders to shoot civilians.

The recent influx of refugees followed violence in the town of Qusair, while thousands of Syrians fled to Wadi Khaled in May, escaping an attack by the Syrian army on the town of Talkalakh.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP in Nicosia that shots rang out overnight in Qusair, which is 15 kilometers from the border with Lebanon, and in Homs.
“Shots were heard overnight Saturday in the town of Qusair,” he said quoting residents, adding that, further north, gunfire was heard in several neighborhoods in Homs.

“Yesterday [Saturday] hundreds of residents fled from Qusair to Lebanon,” Abdel Rahman said.
Four civilians were shot dead by security forces Saturday, two in Qusair and two in Kiswah, south of the capital.
Activists said that security forces began strengthening their presence in the town Friday, while troops have been deployed to areas in Homs for several days, as part of a policy to crush pro-democracy protests.

Refugees have crossed into Lebanon through the Arida border crossing and the Nahr al-Kabir. Some are staying with relatives in the Akkar region, which has close links to southern Syrian towns, while others are staying in tents provided by non-governmental organizations.
A cleric and prominent village figure said hundreds of people, mostly Lebanese living in Syria, had sought a safe haven in the northern Akkar region over the weekend.

Around 350 to 400 people streamed into Kuneissat Friday and Saturday, said Ali Hammoud, a cleric from the Lebanese border village, adding that most came from the villages of Al-Hit and Dweik and some from Qusair.
Future bloc MP Khaled Zahraman said that NGOs and the Higher Relief Committee were providing food and first aid to the refugees in cooperation with the Social Affairs Ministry.

Speaking to a local television station Sunday, Zahraman said that the fear of being killed or arrested was preventing refugees from returning home. The Akkar lawmaker said there were no precise figures on the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

The International Committee of the Red Cross dismissed in a statement Sunday media reports that it was planning to establish a camp for Syrian refugees in north Lebanon in cooperation with the Lebanese Red Cross.
President Bashar Assad has repeatedly described the three-month-long protests in the country as a foreign conspiracy against the government, but the Syrian government’s crackdown, which Syrian rights groups say has led to the deaths of 1,300 protesters, has prompted international condemnation.
Several countries have pushed for a United Nations Security Council resolution to condemn the violence and Friday the European Union announced further sanctions against Syria.