“It's like hell. I am afraid for all my family and everyone I know.”
Sevinaz is from a town near Syria's border with Turkey that immediately came under heavy bombardment when the Turkish military and allied Syrian rebels launched an assault on Kurdish-led forces there on Wednesday.
The 27-year-old Kurdish filmmaker and activist said repeated air and artillery strikes on the town – called Sere Kaniye by Kurds, and Ras al-Ain by Arabs – had forced her to flee with several members of her family.
“I am outside the town with my sick mother. My brother is inside. I have been informed that my cousin might have been martyred. There is no safe place for anybody,” she told the BBC on Thursday morning, hours before rebels said the town was surrounded.
She added: “I'm concerned about it being the last time that I see my city.”
‘Erdogan is a liar'
Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said the aim of the military operation is to create a 32km (20-mile) deep “safe zone” along the Syrian side of the border and to resettle up to two million Syrian refugees there.
He has said he wants to push back from the Turkish border members of a Syrian Kurdish militia called the People's Protection Units (YPG). He insists the YPG is an extension of a rebel group that has fought for Kurdish autonomy in…
