BEIRUT- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accused the West on Wednesday of supporting al Qaeda militants in Syria’s civil war and warned they would turn against their backers and strike “in the heart of Europe and the United States. “

Assad also launched his strongest criticism yet of neighboring Jordan for allowing thousands of fighters to cross the border to join a conflict he insisted his forces would win and save Syria from destruction.

“We have no choice but victory. If we don’t win, Syria will be finished and I don’t think this is a choice for any citizen in Syria,” the defiant president said in a television interview.

Assad’s forces have been fighting back across the country against rebels who have taken control of much of rural Syria and seized a provincial capital in March for the first time in two years of fighting.

The conflict started with mainly peaceful demonstrations but descended into a civil war in which the United Nations says at least 70,000 people have been killed. Islamist militants have emerged as the most potent of the anti-Assad rebels.

Drawing parallels with Western support for anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s, some of whom later formed the al Qaeda organization which attacked the United States in September 2011, Assad said Washington and Europe would regret supporting rebels in Syria.

“The West paid heavily for funding al Qaeda in its early stages in Afghanistan. Today it is supporting it in Syria, Libya and other places, and will pay a heavy price later in the heart of Europe and the United States,” he told al-Ikhbariya channel.

“The truth is, what is happening is that we are mainly are facing extremist forces,” Assad added.

He was speaking a week after Syria’s rebel al-Nusra Front, one of the most effective rebel forces battling his troops, formally pledged allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

A handout picture released by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on April 17, 2013, shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad speaking during an interview in Damascus with Syria’s state television channel Al-Ikhbariya, as the country marks Independence Day, celebrating the 1946 end of France’s presence in Syria. Assad warned Western states that they will pay a heavy price at home for their alleged support of Islamists in the Syrian conflict and said defeat of his regime was not an option.

The United States has designated the Nusra Front a terrorist organization and has sought to bolster rival rebel forces to counter the influence of the Islamists, training fighters in neighboring Jordan and allowing arms shipments to them.

In some of his toughest comments against Jordan, Assad said Syria’s southern neighbor had allowed thousands of fighters with military gear to cross into Syria to join the fight, and warned that the conflict could spread to Jordanian territory.

“The fire will not stop at our border and everybody knows that Jordan is exposed as Syria is,” he said.

He said Syria had sent a security envoy to Amman in recent weeks to inquire about the fighters and reports of rebel training camps but he was met with “complete denial” of any Jordanian role in either issue.

The United States will send 200 troops to Jordan in the coming weeks to help the kingdom boost its defenses in the face of a “deteriorating situation” in Syria, Jordanian Minister of State for Information Mohammad al-Momani told Reuters.

Rebels say U.S. officers in Jordan have been training groups of anti-Assad fighters from Damascus and the southern province of Deraa – where fighting has intensified in recent weeks and rebels have made gains. 

Syrian families have been burned in their homes, people bombed waiting for bread, children tortured, raped and murdered and cities reduced to rubble in Syria’s two-year-old war that has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe, the United Nations said on Thursday.

A quarter of Syria’s 22 million people are displaced within the country and 1.3 million have fled to other states in the Middle East and North Africa, UN aid chief Valerie Amos and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council.

It was a rare public briefing of the Security Council on the conflict in Syria, which was called for by Australia, and Amos pleaded for the 15 council members to “take the action necessary to end this brutal conflict.”

“The situation in Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe with ordinary people paying the price for the failure to end the conflict,” Amos said. “I do not have an answer for those Syrians I have spoken to who asked me why the world has abandoned them.”

The Security Council has been deadlocked on how to end the conflict. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s close ally Russia, with the aid of China, has used its veto power to block any condemnations or attempts to sanction Assad’s government.

The United Nations says the war in Syria, which began as peaceful protests that turned violent when Assad tried to crush the revolt, has claimed more than 70,000 lives.

“Children are among the ones who suffer most,” Amos said. “Children have been murdered, tortured and subjected to sexual violence. Many do not have enough food to eat. Millions have been traumatized by the horrors … This brutal conflict is not only shattering Syria’s present, it is destroying its future.”

Guterres said that since February, there have been 8,000 Syrians a day fleeing across the country’s borders and at that rate the number of refugees was forecast to more than double by the end of the year to 3.5 million.

“This is not just frightening, it risks becoming simply unsustainable. There is no way to adequately respond to the enormous humanitarian needs these figures represent,” he told the Security Council. “And it is difficult to imagine how a nation can endure so much suffering.”

He warned of the conflict spilling over into Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq – Syria’s neighbors bearing the refugee burden. He said that taking into account only registered refugees, Lebanon’s population had grown by 10 percent.

Amos said there were 6.8 million people inside Syria in need of aid.

She said that of the $1.5 billion pledged by international donors to cover Syria’s humanitarian needs until June, only about half had been paid. She also painted a dire picture of international efforts to deliver aid within Syria.

Bureaucratic obstacles make it almost impossible for aid to be distributed and the Syrian government has reduced the number of aid groups approved to work in the country to 29 from 110, Amos said, adding that aid convoys were also regularly attacked or shot at and staff intimidated or kidnapped.

Amos warned that the limitations on the ground have left the United Nations “precariously close to suspending some critical humanitarian operations.”