Billions pledged for Syria as tens of thousands flee bombardments

LONDON - Donor nations pledged on Thursday to give $11 billion in aid to Syrians by 2020 as world leaders tried to tackle the world's worst humanitarian crisis, while Turkey reported a new exodus of tens of thousands fleeing air strikes.

With Syria's five-year-old civil war raging and another attempt at peace negotiations called off in Geneva after just a few days, a donor conference in London sought to address the needs of some 6 million people displaced within Syria and more than 4 million refugees in other countries.

Underlining the desperate situation on the ground in Syria, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the meeting that up to 70,000 Syrians were on the move towards his country to escape aerial bombardments on the city of Aleppo.

Davutoglu accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces, backed by foreign fighters and Russian air strikes, of seeking to do the same to Aleppo as they did to the besieged town of Madaya, where dozens have starved to death.

"What they want to do in Aleppo today is exactly what they did in Madaya before, a siege of starvation," he told a news conference at the end of the event.

Turkey is already hosting more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees. Jordan and Lebanon are the other countries bearing the brunt of the Syrian refugee exodus.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said donors had pledged a total of $6 billion for Syrians for 2016, and a further $5 billion to be spent by 2020, describing the total as the largest amount ever raised in a single day for a humanitarian crisis.

U.N. agencies are appealing for $7.73 billion for this year, with governments of countries in the region asking for an additional $1.2 billion for their national response plans.

"We have combined a renewed effort to address the shortfall in humanitarian funding with a new approach to provide the education and jobs that will bolster stability in the region," Cameron said.

Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, where a significant share of the money pledged will be spent, committed to ensuring all refugee children in their countries would have access to education, and to opening up their economies so adult refugees could work.