February 23
04:17
2016
After a harrowing 15-hour journey by minibus, dodging gunfire and explosions, a group of Syrian refugees reached a village near Turkey, desperate to cross the recently shut border into safety. "The people smugglers are there and they're shouting 'Turkey! Who wants to go to Turkey?'" Fatima al-Ahmed recalled, after reaching the town of Kilis on the Turkish side of the frontier. The 27-year-old woman told AFP about her clandestine escape from Aleppo to Kilis in southern Turkey a week ago — a journey that in peacetime would have taken little more than 90 minutes.
