BAGHDAD - Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region received up to 9,000 Syrian refugees looking to flee their country's ongoing violence, a Kurdish official said on Saturday.

"The camps, which prepared for Syrian refugees crossing the (Syria-Kurdistan) border, continue receiving increasing numbers of refugees and till today we have received 9,000 of them," Mohammed Abdullah, head of the directorate of Immigration and Immigrants of Kurdistan's Duhuk province, told reporters.

The Kurdish regional government in cooperation with international and some local humanitarian organizations are offering various aids to the refugees who are mostly Kurds coming from Syria's Kurdish cities adjacent to the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

On Friday, the central government in Baghdad said it is unable to receive Syrian refugees because of the poor logistics and security situation in the Iraq.

"Our borders located in desert areas. We cannot help (Syrian) refugees because of the unstable (Iraqi) security situation," the government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said in an interview on the state-run Iraqia television.

Dabbagh explained that his country's border with Syria is a desert with very few cities that are unable to provide services for thousands of Syrian refugees who are expected to pour into neighboring countries of Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.

Syria has been wrecked by bombings and violence against civilians since March 2011, when anti-government protests began. The unrest has claimed the lives of thousands of people, including large numbers of security forces.