Some 24-hundred Syrian refugees have fled en masse to Turkey to escape the bloody confrontation between government forces and antigovernment rebels in their homeland.

Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported Wednesday that the group of largely women and children refugees crossed the border into Turkey late Tuesday. The report said most of them are from Syria’s northern cities of Aleppo and Idlib.

Anatolia said the group includes 37 people who deserted government forces, including two generals and two colonels.

More than 19-thousand people are estimated to have been killed in Syria since antigovernment protests calling for President Bashar al-Assad’s resignation began in March last year.