Nicola Sturgeon has insisted the UK can and must do more to help refugees fleeing Syria for Europe.

Scotland should accept 1,000 people as a "starting point" for further help, the First Minister said.

She also criticised the UK Government, accusing it of "struggling to show leadership in this refugee crisis".

Ms Sturgeon said the crisis, sparked by hundreds of thousands fleeing from Syria to Europe, was the worst humanitarian disaster since the Second World War.

People across the world have been shocked by images of desperate families seeking safety, with Ms Sturgeon admitting she had been reduced to tears by the picture of a drowned Syrian boy who was washed up on a Turkish beach.

She said such images would "haunt our consciences and reputation for many generations to come if we don't together and collectively act to help those in desperate need".

While she accepted a long-term solution to problems in Syria must be found, she argued: "We cannot and we must not leave our fellow human beings to perish in the meantime."

The SNP leader said: "We here in Scotland and across the UK can do more, and I believe we must do more."

Ms Sturgeon spoke at the start of an emergency summit in Edinburgh involving the Scottish Refugee Council, council leaders, religious groups and opposition politicians, in discussions about what could be done to help.

Prime Minister David Cameron had said earlier that Britain will take ''thousands more'' refugees from camps on the borders of war-torn Syria.

He said the UK is already ''providing sanctuary'' to about 5,000 refugees from the camps and had provided around £900 million in aid - more than any other European country.

But while he said there is a ''moral responsibility'' to help refugees, he gave no indication that the UK would be willing to resettle any of the hundreds of thousands of desperate people who have made Mediterranean crossings by boat to reach Europe over the past few months.

Ms Sturgeon welcomed his comments but stressed: "We need to hear more detail now of exactly what is being proposed in terms of accepting thousands more refugees.

"This crisis is unprecedented in its nature but it is not beyond resolution if we act now and we act firmly, and with a response that matches the scale of the crisis.

"As I said in a letter to the Prime Minister last night, the scale of such a humanitarian emergency is immense but it is not insurmountable."

She continued: "We recognise the need for long-term co-ordinated action to tackle the causes of this crisis but that cannot be a substitute for an immediate humanitarian response.

"We, with our neighbours and friends across the EU, have a moral obligation to offer a place of safety to desperate people fleeing conflict and persecution.

"This is a crisis that must transcend politics, what we need today is real, practical, collective and co-ordinated action to deliver help to those who need it."

She said the summit she is hosting would provide a "a chance to examine how we in Scotland can play our full part in that".

The First Minister said: "It has been suggested we in Scotland should ready ourselves to accept 1,000 refugees - I believe we should do so not as a cap or a limit, but as a starting point for a meaningful discussion about how much we can practically contribute."

Both Scotland and the UK share a "long and proud tradition as a welcoming and a tolerant nation", Ms Sturgeon said.

"Britain down the generations has distinguished itself in the welcome it has given to refugees fleeing war and persecution.

"It is that proud history of compassion and leadership, as well as our human despair at the images we see daily on our TV screens, that makes it, in my view, so desperately dispiriting to see the UK Government struggle to show leadership in this refugee crisis."

She stated: "Make no mistake, our response to this crisis today, in Scotland and the UK and across the European Union, will be judged by history. I hope we can make future generations proud of us.

"I hope we can prove our proud traditions have not perished in a narrow debate about immigration, but that instead when the world is looking for leadership, courage and a simple display of common humanity we will be found standing eagerly at the front of the queue, not cowering timidly at the back.

"As First Minister of Scotland my message is a simple one: we stand ready in the best traditions of this nation to offer sanctuary to those who desperately need it."

Ms Sturgeon described the refugee situation as a "humanitarian crisis on a scale not seen in Europe since the Second World War".

Speaking from the Scottish Government's headquarters in Edinburgh, she said: "The United Nations estimates that up to a third of a million people have tried to cross the Mediterranean in the last few months alone, nearly 3,000 have died in the process.

"Desperate people are travelling through Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, into Hungary, as they try to get to Austria and Germany.

"The images of people suffocating in the back of trucks, of children drowning, of people on our own doorstep losing their lives as they try to cross from Calais into Britain haunt us on a daily basis.

"Be in no doubt they will haunt our consciences and our reputation for many generations to come if we don't together and collectively act to help those who are in desperate need."

She added: "I am not suggesting that solutions are easy, nor am I suggesting we can help everybody, heartbreaking as it is, we know that we can't.

"But that is no excuse for not doing everything we can do for help."

She stressed those fleeing to Europe should be treated as refugees, not migrants.

"It is important we don't describe this as a migration crisis, immigration and asylum are not the same things," the First Minister said.

"It is perhaps treating them as if they are that is making it so difficult for David Cameron to show the leadership he must.

"Instead of this being a humanitarian response to a refugee crisis, it has become part of a vexed, troubled and often pejorative debate on immigration."

The First Minister continued: "The people we see crowding on railway stations and wading ashore on Europe's southern and eastern frontiers are not willing migrants, they are desperate, frightened and vulnerable human beings forced to flee their homelands often in fear of their lives.

"The fact that so many are prepared to risk their lives and risk the lives of their children to get to Europe should be proof enough of that.

"The image this week of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed ashore on a Turkish beach is heartbreaking beyond words, it moved me, and I am sure countless others around the world, to tears.

"It is a picture now seared into the collective consciousness of the world and it is a demonstration in the starkest and cruellest terms possible of the reality of what this crisis is.

"What we are witnessing is a chain of human misery stretching from those south-eastern boundaries of the EU all the way to north Africa, Syria, Afghanistan and other countries.

"I am not suggesting there are easy answers to this crisis, its causes are complex and varied and it won't be solved overnight. However, I do believe we need a better response."

Ms Sturgeon said: "These people are real asylum seekers, they are genuine refugees and we have a moral responsibility to them.

"We cannot and must not walk by on the other side of the street while a human catastrophe of enormous proportions unfolds on our doorstep.

"As an EU member state we have a duty as well as a moral and humanitarian obligation to face up to our responsibilities and accept a fair and proportionate share of refugees. We can't leave it to others to shoulder the responsibility alone."

Shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray is urging the SNP to use its Opposition Day debate next week to press the UK Government on its "shameful" response to the crisis.

He said opposition parties at Westminster must speak out with "one voice" on the issue.

The Labour MP has written to the SNP's Westminster leader Angus Robertson, suggesting their parties work together to "put the case to the Government for providing more support for refugees".

Mr Murray said: "The UK Government's response to this tragedy has been shameful, and I believe it is important we continue to put the case to the Government for providing more support for refugees, and for offering more opportunities for them to find refuge in this country."

While he said Labour would use every means possible to raise the plight of the refugees in the House of Commons, he told Mr Robertson: "I believe the opposition needs to speak with one voice on this issue."

The Labour MP urged the SNP use its debating time on Wednesday "to put this issue firmly on the agenda".

He said: "This will be the only opportunity that the House has to both consider this issue and vote on a motion. It is, therefore, a key opportunity to change the Government's approach to the refugee crisis."