In a wooden hut at the back of a hospital, a woman cradled the head of a dead man and dabbed away grime and blood with a sponge. A blanket covered the man’s mutilated lower half. His blood-soaked military fatigues were still wrapped around his chest.

On a table behind, another body lay zipped into a large blue bag – a young woman this time, also dressed in green and wearing the patches of Kurdish forces. The medical worker straightened her head and gently swept the dead woman’s hair from her face. “We have five martyrs now,” she said, pointing across the makeshift morgue. “Three military and two civilians. The fighters were trying to rescue the others.”

The war between Kurdish forces and Turkey was well into its third day, the bloodiest yet, and ambulances, both real and makeshift, were arriving regularly. As they pulled up, locals and medics gathered around ready to tend to each new body and tell the story of how they had died. “He was a civilian,” one man said as he uncovered a young boy’s face. “Most of them are,” claimed another. “This is a war against the Kurdish people.”

Quick guide What is happening in north-eastern Syria? Show Hide Who is in control in north-eastern Syria? Until Turkey launched its offensive there on 9 October, the region was controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which comprises militia groups representing a range of ethnicities, though its backbone is Kurdish. Since the Turkish incursion, the SDF has lost much of its territory and appears to be losing its grip on key cities. On 13 October, Kurdish leaders agreed to allow Syrian regime forces to enter some cities to protect them from being captured by Turkey and its allies. The deal effectively hands over control of huge swathes of the region to Damascus. That leaves north-eastern Syria divided between Syrian regime forces, Syrian opposition militia and their Turkish allies, and areas still held by the SDF – for now. On 17 October Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, agreed with US vice-president Mike Pence, to suspend Ankara’s operation for five days in order to allow Kurdish troops to withdraw. The following week, on 22 October, Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin agreed on the parameters of the proposed Turkish “safe zone” in Syria. How did the SDF come to control the region? Before the SDF was formed in 2015, the Kurds had created their own militias who mobilised during the Syrian civil war to defend Kurdish cities and villages and carve out what they hoped would eventually at least become a semi-autonomous province. In late 2014, the Kurds were struggling to fend off an Islamic State siege of Kobane, a major city under their control. With US support, including arms and airstrikes, the Kurds managed to beat back Isis and went on to win a string of victories against the radical militant group. Along the way the fighters absorbed non-Kurdish groups, changed their name to the SDF and grew to include 60,000 soldiers. Why does Turkey oppose the Kurds? For years, Turkey has watched the growing ties between the US and SDF with alarm. Significant numbers of the Kurds in the SDF were also members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) that has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for more than 35 years in which as many as 40,000 people have died. The PKK initially called for independence and now demands greater autonomy for Kurds inside Turkey. Turkey claims the PKK has continued to wage war on the Turkish state, even as it has assisted in the fight against Isis. The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US, the UK, Nato and others and this has proved awkward for the US and its allies, who have chosen to downplay the SDF’s links to the PKK, preferring to focus on their shared objective of defeating Isis. What are Turkey’s objectives on its southern border? Turkey aims firstly to push the SDF away from its border, creating a 20-mile (32km) buffer zone that would have been jointly patrolled by Turkish and US troops until Trump’s recent announcement that American soldiers would withdraw from the region. Erdoğan has also said he would seek to relocate more than 1 million Syrian refugees in this “safe zone”, both removing them from his country (where their presence has started to create a backlash) and complicating the demographic mix in what he fears could become an autonomous Kurdish state on his border. How would a Turkish incursion impact on Isis? Nearly 11,000 Isis fighters, including almost 2,000 foreigners, and tens of thousands of their wives and children, are being held in detention camps and hastily fortified prisons across north-eastern Syria. SDF leaders have warned they cannot guarantee the security of these prisoners if they are forced to redeploy their forces to the frontlines of a war against Turkey. They also fear Isis could use the chaos of war to mount attacks to free their fighters or reclaim territory.

On 11 October, it was reported that at least five detained Isis fighters had escaped a prison in the region. Two days later, 750 foreign women affiliated to Isis and their children managed to break out of a secure annex in the Ain Issa camp for displaced people, according to SDF officials. It is unclear which detention sites the SDF still controls and the status of the prisoners inside. Michael Safi

In war the dead often give up their secrets. It was no different here in this Syrian town 20 miles from the frontline where many of those killed were being brought. So far the majority have been fighters torn apart by Turkish weapons fired into the town of Ras al-Ayn, from which civilians continued to flee on Friday along the only road to safety.

In the sky, fighter planes and vultures circled. The jets picked out targets beneath and the circling birds fed on the aftermath. “There are 10 martyrs in the field, near the blue building,” said a local man, sheltering under a shopfront a mile from Ras al-Ayn. “A plane bombed them this morning.”

Further down the road a second airstrike had hit a checkpoint, all but sealing the town and trapping the few civilians who remained. The thud of artillery rounds sent a mushroom cloud of concrete dust soaring, yet the occasional truck dared to run the gauntlet. Teaming with mattresses, bags and the odd caged parrot, they made their way towards the relative safety of Tal Tamir, a town used as a waypoint by many of those fleeing.

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Ambulances sped past them, disgorging the old and young at the hospital entrance or continuing around the back if there was nothing more to do. A woman sat on her haunches singing songs to her dead son inside. Next to her, a Kurdish woman wrapped large pieces of cotton wool in bandages and laid them on the ground.

“What happened to him?” a Kurdish morgue worker asked the mourning Arab mother as she placed a veil over her hair. “We were sitting outside and the bullets came; one hit him in the head,” she replied. “I don’t know where it came from.”

Across the yard, two men had just finished cutting body armour from two corpses and removing ammunition magazines from their webbing. Dripping blood pooled at their feet as they piled the remains into black plastic bags. “They were trying to pull out the civilians and our comrades were cut in half. A three-year-old girl lost her life.”

US warns Turkey of red lines as Syria offensive death toll mounts Read more

The narrative has quickly become an essential part of the Kurdish fight with Turkey, and who is dying is central. Halfway between Tal Tamir and Ras al-Ayn, a Turkish Kurd in control of a meeting point repeated a claim made many times in the past three days, in the wake of Donald Trump’s decision to sever a four-year alliance: that the world had conspired throughout history against the Kurds, and this time was no different.

On the road back to Qamishli, a foreboding black plume suddenly appeared. War had struck the heart of the largest city in north-east Syria. “There’s been an attack near the airport,” shouted a local over the phone. The smoke came from a car bomb, not a Turkish attack. The chaotic aftermath of steam, grime and scorched steel littered much of a city block as firefighters and rescuers attempted to gain control.

“There was a massive explosion, then all this,” said Razeq Ahmad, a falafel seller who had been standing 20 metres away and somehow emerged unscathed. At least two other people had been killed and another five maimed by an attack that has added yet another dimension to the war for Kurdish lands. Islamic State were the suspects this time.

“Whenever there’s chaos you’ll find them,” said Kawa Maqso. “Who else could have done this?”