Syrians at mercy of greedy smugglers after Turkey's border closure

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.

"They are mean, violent, and only think about money. They push us like beasts, hitting the women who don't walk fast enough, even when they are carrying babies.

"It's Terrible, It's The Law Of The Jungle."

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.

Turkey's decision to close its border with Syria has become a boon for smugglers who are charging refugees to secretly cross over.

Like the traffickers who make thousands of dollars off each boat-load of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Italy or the Aegean to Greece, smugglers at the Turkish border take advantage of Syrians who refuse to wait in overcrowded tent camps for Ankara to possibly open up the crossing.

Fatima, sitting at a table outside a cafe in Kilis, said she crossed the border with her two-year-old son in her arms through an opening cut in the barbed wire fence.

She had decided to flee her home in the rebel-held neighbourhood of Sakhur in eastern Aleppo, when her husband was killed a month ago in the bombing while he was out looking for food.

'Too Many People'

The smugglers organised them "in groups of eight, with our neighbours," she said, speaking in a soft voice.

"They helped me pay, I didn't have enough money. Before, everything was organised in Aleppo, we used smugglers we trusted.

"But now since the Russian bombing, there are too many people," she said referring to the
Source: AFP