Image of Syrian child sleeping on snow stirs online reaction

image of a child sleeping on the snow in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley has cooked up a storm online.

The image shows a young boy, covered in a carpet, sleeping on the cold snow in an uncomfortable position.

The cold and wet weather across the region has made conditions miserable for refugees, which have exceeded 540,000 with more than 140,000 emerging in the past six weeks, according to the United Nations.

The greatest number of Syrian refugees is in Lebanon, where there are almost 170,000 registered people who have fled the violence since March 2011, when protests against the Syrian regime erupted. The Lebanese government, however, said the number of refugees was estimated to be around 200,000.

More than 13,000 Syrians have entered Lebanon in the past few days only, according to recent media reports.

Many Syrians are fleeing to neighboring countries to escape a civil war, which – according to the latest U.N. figures – has killed more than 60,000 people.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon made an appeal Friday for more international support for the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

"I call upon and appeal most urgently to the international community, and particularly the countries in this region, to provide on an urgent basis the humanitarian assistance," he said during a stop at Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp along the Syrian border. "We need your caring hands to those helpless people." SHOW MORE