Turkish border with Syria remains closed to most but some have escaped horrors of Idlib

In a video shot by her father, three-year-old Salwa listens intently to the rumble of military hardware in the distance. “Is it a plane or a shell?” he asks as they sit together on the sofa. “Shell!” she shouts, giggling hysterically when it explodes.

Turning the sounds of airstrikes and shelling into a game is how Abdullah Mohammed, 32, protected his daughter from the trauma of Syria’s war. Last week the family made it to the safety of Antakya, just over the Turkish border. Dancing around her new home in a pink princess dress, for the first time in her life Salwa doesn’t have to listen to the sounds of the conflict.

Abdullah is giddy with relief. “Now we don’t have to be afraid any more,” he said. “Salwa has a completely different future.”

The family were very lucky to be invited to Turkey rather than having to pay smugglers thousands of dollars and then dodge the bullets of border guards. There are 3 million other people still trapped by a three-month-old campaign by the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and his Russian allies to seize back north-western Idlib province, the last opposition stronghold in the country.

Russian airpower has emptied towns and villages of civilians and fighters, allowing the Syrian army and allied Iranian-backed militias to surge forwards and capture swathes of territory.

While Damascus and Moscow say they are targeting jihadist factions not covered by a 2018 deescalation deal, the UN says the aerial bombardment and shelling has killed more than 130 civilians in February alone, with dozens of hospitals and schools hit. More than 900,000 people have left their homes, most of them fleeing north to the relative safety of the Turkish border, in what is now the worst humanitarian crisis of the nine-year-old war to date.

The threat of a potential new influx of millions of refugees led Turkey, which supports some of the rebel groups, to beef up its presence in Idlib, sending thousands of troops and convoys of equipment in an attempt to repel the regime advance.

That in turn led to an escalation in tensions between Ankara and Moscow after at least 33 Turkish troops were killed in an airstrike last Thursday. While Turkey, a Nato member, officially blamed the Syrian regime for the attack, sources on the ground suggest the strike was actually carried out by the Russian air force.

Since then the Turks have vented their fury on Assad’s forces, destroying dozens of tanks, howitzers and air defence systems in what has been in effect a declaration of war on the regime. On Tuesday, Turkish F-16s roared over the hilly Bab al-Hawa border crossing into Idlib, where they took down a fourth Syrian jet.

The intense fighting is likely to get worse over the next few days as the parties scramble for maximum leverage before talks on Thursday between the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

“Turkish drones, artillery and surface-to-surface missiles have pushed the regime back,” said Omar Saad, a fighter with the Turkish-backed National Front group. “It’s the first time ever I’ve seen Assad soldiers being hunted by aerial strikes the way they kill civilians. It’s justice. And every warplane downed means civilian lives are saved.”

Otherwise, the Turkish side of the border zone is deceptively quiet. Stray dogs sleep beneath blossoming apricot trees and sheep roam the hillside. Shops in the border town of Reyhanlı have put up Turkish flags in solidarity with the operation.

Bab al-Hawa has seen a steady stream of military vehicles and aid trucks, as well as a quick show of support from the US special representative to Syria, James Jeffrey, and the US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, during a visit to the Atmeh displacement camp on Tuesday.

The traffic is almost entirely one way: Turks go in but few Syrians are allowed to come out, usually those with pre-existing travel permits for medical care. The sprawling misery of Atmeh on the other side of the wire may as well be a million miles away.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Syrian people cross the border into Turkey at Reyhanlı. Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA

The situation is the opposite of the scene unfolding on the other side of the country, at Turkey’s borders with the EU. Following the strike on Turkish troops, Ankara declared it would no longer stop migrants from trying to cross into Europe – a move designed to pressure western allies to support the Turkish campaign in Idilb.

Since then the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates at least 13,000 people have travelled west to try their luck. One Syrian baby drowned after a boat capsized while trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos, and one man from Aleppo died after being shot in the throat with a rubber bullet allegedly fired by Greek border guards.

That the new crisis on the fringes of the EU is manufactured is made all the more apparent by the fact that Turkey’s southern border with Syria remains shut.

Abdulnaser al-Desh, stuck in Atmeh camp, does not have the money – up to $3,000 per person – that smugglers demand to get his wife and three children to Turkey.

“We heard that Turkey is going to open the border with Idlib but it’s still closed. They just opened the European side,” he said. “We are being used as bargaining chips. It is humiliating to be treated like a disease which no one wants.”

Salwa’s father, Abdullah, says he feels guilty his family managed to escape while so many in Syria are still suffering. “I feel bad to leave my siblings and Salwa’s cousins and grandfather behind. At the same time though, it is not too much to ask for a life where you are treated like a human being. I can take Salwa to the park every day. She is so much happier already.”

Salwa clambers on to his lap as he talks in the living room of a friend’s house where the family are staying for now, demanding to be picked up and tickled. Neither of them can stop laughing.