Umm Isham, a 34-year-old housewife, lost her husband five months ago to a blast from a Syrian tank, and had her house near Damascus leveled by a bomb. Her two sons, 11 and 12, will grow up without their father.

She tried to stay in her country but recently decided to seek safety in Turkey, crossing the border illegally, with little money and few clothes. She had arrived in Hacipasa just four hours earlier, with the ankles of her jeans still wet and muddy from crossing the Orontes river that divides the Turkish border town from northwestern Syria.

The regime is "shelling houses and killing people along the way. It's not safe to send your son anywhere because a sniper might be shooting. Nobody is safe. What kind of regime is killing its own people?" she asked.

Umm Isham, who asked that she only be identified by her nickname, and her two children are among the latest of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have fled the intense civil war that has raged for almost two years.

More than 1,000 Syrian refugees are in Hacipasa, Mayor Mehmet Zia Kirk said -- living with relatives or friends, in rented houses or under tarps in a warehouse.

The United Nations estimates that more than 60,000 Syrians have died since the uprising against the regime started in March 2011.

The conflict is mainly between the majority Sunnis who are battling against the minority Alawite-dominated regime led by Bashar al-Assad.

In December, the U.N. called for $1.1 billion for externally displaced Syrians' humanitarian needs, but only 18 percent of the appeal has been funded, according to a briefing by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees on Tuesday.

An international aid conference is planned for January 30 in Kuwait to try to raise more of the money.

U.N. regional refugee coordinator Panos Moumtzis recently said the U.N. estimates that five million Syrians in 2013 will be in urgent need of assistance with shelter, medical treatment, food, and water.