One million Syrians have fled their homeland, the head of the UN refugee agency said Wednesday, warning that in the absence of a political solution, humanitarian workers need additional funds to help the refugees and support the countries hosting them.

“With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiralling towards full-scale disaster,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said in a press statement. “We are doing everything we can to help, but the international humanitarian response capacity is dangerously stretched. This tragedy has to be stopped.”

AFP adds: Syrian warplanes struck rebel enclaves in flashpoints across the country on Wednesday, while the northern city of Raqa came under total rebel control Wednesday, two days into battles with troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime over the army’s last bastion there, a watchdog said.

On the battlefront, an air raid in the northern city of Raqa killed and wounded dozens of people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The strikes came two days after rebels overran most of the strategic capital of Raqa province in what was touted as their biggest victory since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule erupted in March 2011.

“Dozens of people were killed or wounded in air strikes in Raqa city that targeted the areas around security and government buildings” that the rebels seized during their advance, said the Britain-based watchdog.

Fighter jets also bombarded Homs in the centre, on the fourth day of a major offensive aimed at crushing the insurgency in the country’s third-largest city, said the Observatory. Near Damascus, the air force bombarded several rebel enclaves in the Eastern Ghouta area, including the battered town of Douma, a rebel stronghold, said the watchdog which relies on a vast network of activists and medics on the ground.

“Raqa city is now out of the army’s control, after military intelligence troops surrendered to rebels following fierce clashes that raged for two days,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. “It is the first provincial capital out of regime control,” he added.
The United Nations says at least 70,000 people have been killed since the start of the uprising. On a visit to the European Parliament in Brussels, the chief of staff of Syria’s rebel army said Assad’s regime could be toppled “within a month” if Western nations agreed to arm the insurgency. “What we have now is little, very very little,” said the Free Syrian Army chief, Brigadier General Selim Idriss. “If we have the weapons we need, we can bring down the regime in a month.”

Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague, meanwhile, said London will provide body armour and armoured vehicles to the rebels, as part of a “non-lethal” package of aid worth $20 million. “The fact remains that diplomacy is taking far too long and the prospect of an immediate breakthrough is slim,” he told parliament in London. The British announcement comes after the European Union last Thursday authorised the supply of non-lethal military equipment and training to Assad’s foes.

On the diplomatic front, the foreign ministry in Moscow said Russia’s pointman on Syria would meet his US counterpart and UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in London on Thursday to discuss the conflict. “There is an understanding in principle for Mr (Mikhail) Bogdanov to meet in London ... with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns” and Brahimi, foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

Russia is upset with a US decision to also step up its non-military support for the armed rebels, and it opposes calls for Assad to step down before a launch of dialogue between the regime and opposition.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, in comments aired on Wednesday, said that “a lot of countries” are training Syrian rebels as part of stepped up efforts to topple Assad. “It’s one part of it. But other nations are doing other things. There are a lot of nations working at this. And so I think President Assad needs to read the tea leaves correctly,” Kerry told Fox News.

Armed fighters on Wednesday detained about 20 UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel, a UN spokesman said. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said the peacekeepers were from the Philippines. But the United Nations did not give the nationalities of the UN Disengagement Force (UNDOF) troops taken in the latest incident in the tense Golan zone.

UN deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey told reporters the UN force had “reported that earlier today approximately 30 armed fighters stopped and detained about 20 peacekeepers within the area of limitation.”