Jordan on Sunday opened its first official refugee camp to help host tens of thousands of Syrians who have fled the mounting violence in its northern neighbour.

“I hope the ordeal of our Syrian brothers will vanish,” Interior Minister Ghaleb Zubi told reporters as he and Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh opened the Zaatari camp, which can take up to 120,000 refugees, in Mafraq near the border with Syria.

Judeh said between 1,000 and 2,000 Syrians are fleeing to Jordan every day.

“We are doing our utmost to provide safety and security to those refugees, while at the same time seeking a political solution to end the bloodshed in Syria,” he said.

Judeh said Jordan is now hosting more than 142,000 Syrians, around 36,000 of whom are UN-registered. The majority of Syrians are living with Jordanian relatives in the country’s north.

Officials said the first batch of 500 refugees will be moved to the new camp later Sunday from a military-guarded housing complex in the border town of Ramtha. About of 500-700 refugees will be admitted to the camp after breaking the Ramadan fast later Sunday, the UNHCR representative to Jordan Andrew Harper said.

More than 12,000 Syrians fleeing the violence in their home country have sought refuge in Algeria, a source close to the interior ministry said on Sunday.

The authorities have decided to “take charge of Syrians who have sought refuge in Algeria, and whose number is estimated officially at 12,000,” the source told reporters, although Syrian opposition sources put the number at up to 20,000.

Algiers is considering using schools that are closed for the summer to house Syrians who are currently in the capital.

Syrian opposition sources inside Algeria say many of their countrymen are also present in other towns in the North African nation, and say they number between 18,000 and 20,000.

Some newspapers have reported as many as 23,000 Syrians in the country, but such figures are hard to verify since they include only arrivals, and do not include those leaving later.

The conflict in Syria has killed more than 20,000 people since the uprising against the regime of President Bashar Al Assad erupted in March 2011, human rights monitors say.