AL QAA, Lebanon — Sunni Muslims who have fled Syria described a government crackdown that is more pervasive and more sectarian than previously understood, with civilians affiliated with President Bashar al-Assad’s minority religious sect shooting at their onetime neighbors as the military presses what many Sunnis see as a campaign to force them to flee their homes and villages in some sections of the country.


The refugees, from in and around Qusayr, a town in the province of the rebellious city of Homs, this week offered a rare witness account of the unfolding tumult in western Syria as an intensive bombardment of communities continues. They said it appeared that the government concluded that when it pushed rebels from strongholds like the Bab Amr neighborhood in Homs, opposition fighters and protesters quickly regrouped in other Sunni areas.


As a result, they said they believed that the government was not only striking at large, rebellious urban centers, but had also hit towns and villages that had not been seen as central to the year-old uprising. The refugees’ firsthand accounts painted a picture of a section of western Syria that is more thoroughly under siege — and perhaps more widely in revolt — than has previously been depicted.


“The army wants to displace people to get them away from the protests,” said Abu Munzer, 59, a Syrian Army veteran from the village of Mazaria, huddling by a wood stove in a cinder-block farmhouse with about 20 other refugees; like most people interviewed, he was afraid to give his full name. “If they die or they leave, there will be no one there to protest.”


There are at least 6,000 Syrian refugees living in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, according to the United Nations, including several dozen men, women and children interviewed here at the northern end of the valley. They said they felt threatened as Sunnis, and several said that they saw the military give out rifles to residents of neighboring Alawite villages — members of the same heterodox Muslim sect as Mr. Assad — and that their neighbors then opened fire on them. Their accounts reinforce reports from activists reached inside Syria by telephone and e-mail of displacement along sectarian lines, and interviews with people in Syria.


The refugees described a situation where even in relatively obscure villages and towns like Qusayr, the government crackdown has intensified, schools and businesses are closed, bombardments are frequent, and people are afraid to go outside for fear of shelling and snipers. The refugees said they believed that a majority of Sunni residents of four villages, Rabli, Zahra, Joussi and Mazaria, had fled to other countries or other areas inside Syria.


It is hard to evaluate all of the refugees’ claims because in the Syrian conflict, the longest and bloodiest of the Arab revolts, each side blames the other for sectarian division. Most Syrians are Sunni Muslims, but the government and security elites are dominated by Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect. The government has inflamed sectarian fears by portraying itself as the defender of Syria’s substantial Christian and Alawite populations against what it calls attacks by Sunni Islamists.


Umm Nasser, 34, a pregnant woman sheltering with female residents and their dozen children in a farm building here, said that about 15 members of her family in the village of Joussi came under fire from the nearby Alawite village of Hasbeeh two weeks ago as they tried to leave their house. Her mother, Umm Khalid, 65, said that beginning in October she had seen government troops laying out rifles on the ground and distributing them to Alawite residents. Umm Nasser said that she did not know why, but that in the past month many Joussi residents had been fired upon by Hasbeeh residents.


“We know them,” she said. “We used to live side by side.”


Skeptics say that if whole populations were fleeing there would be many thousands more refugees in neighboring countries. Refugees, however, say that many people are afraid to cross into Lebanon, whose army they see as supporting Syria, and instead have fled to relatives’ homes elsewhere in Syria. The Syrian Red Crescent reported this month that there were more than 200,000 internally displaced people.