A week ago, Turkey launched an attack in northwest Syria, targeting Kurdish militias near its border. These are the same militias that helped the United States repel ISIS there; Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, regards them as terrorists, and said this week that they are no different from ISIS. The city of Afrin has thus far received the brunt of Turkey’s attacks, which have displaced some five thousand people, according to the United Nations, and have killed or injured more than a hundred civilians, according to the Red Crescent. The White House said in a statement on Wednesday that President Trump had called Erdoğan and “urged Turkey to exercise caution and to avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces.” A Turkish official disputed that description, saying that Trump did not express any concerns about the escalating violence in Afrin. In a story earlier this week, the Times noted that the Administration appears to be sending mixed messages to Turkey.

On Thursday, around half past seven in the evening, Afrin time, I spoke with Hussein Othman, who has four children and runs a pharmacy in Afrin. His younger brother, Edress, is an oncologist in his forties who came to the United States for his medical residency and now lives in Massachusetts. (Edress became a U.S. citizen in 2013.) Hussein and Edress’s father, Mohamed, is eighty-five and still lives in Afrin. “He’s against the war,” Edress told me. “He’s an illiterate olive-tree farmer, born during World War II. He lived in refugee camps, built a family, built a house, built olive farms—everything from the ground up. He raised ten kids and sent me to the United States, made me into a doctor. And now he’s being asked to leave his house. My older brother couldn’t drag him out, even though they were bombing next door.”

The house is in a village north of Afrin proper, called Rajo. Electricity in the area, supplied by generators, is limited to four hours a day; the Internet does not work, but Syria’s cell network does. Taking a break from seeing cancer patients, Edress helped me call Hussein and then translated my questions and his older brother’s answers. Less than an hour earlier, a Turkish warplane had struck within a block of a family home, where Hussein, Mohamed, and other Othmans were gathered. For the moment, they are safe. Hussein’s account of the last week in Afrin has been edited and condensed.

“I was in my pharmacy last Saturday when it began. At exactly 4 P.M., we suddenly heard a noise we haven’t heard before. The war in Syria has gone on for six years, but we’ve never heard anything like this. The sky was full of jets. Ten, at least, above our village. Like bees. All the mountaintops, they were just burning. We thought, with the noise, that we were hit. The windows had broken. The kids were crying. We didn’t know what to do. We were so shocked. This lasted for one hour. We thought they’d left. Then, at 11 P.M. that night, they returned and did the same thing.

“There’s been very little sleep since. Some have gone to caves to try to rest more safely. One of my sisters, a widow named Samira, she has been sleeping in caves this week. If people have basements, they go there.

“Last night, at midnight, we were sleeping at our house and they started the bombardment again. The house next door, one of the poorest in the area, the older woman there got badly injured. The boy, Shiar, who was fourteen, died right away. And the ten-year-old-girl, Hanifa, her leg was chopped off, amputated. The bomb came through the roof when they were sleeping. Just thirty or forty metres from our home.

“We have a basement and we stayed there. Even so, we overheard our neighbors’ cries. No one could help them for two or three hours. If the bombardment had stopped, maybe we could have rescued the boy. But, by the time it stopped, it was too late. When we came out, the boy was dead and the girl needed help. Another neighbor, a woman who was eighty, Houra, she died in her basement bed, apparently of a heart attack.

“Everyone is running out of food, out of medicine. I opened my pharmacy, in Rajo, for just an hour to give medicine to people—most of it for free—earlier today. We also gave some to the Red Crescent, to help with the wounded. But the jets started bombing next to the pharmacy, and we had to run for our lives.

“We know it’s not Americans bombing us. But it’s still the Americans doing this to us. If the Americans told a NATO member, Turkey, not to bombard us, they would not have done it. Everyone in Afrin, we feel like this is the biggest betrayal of our lives. With the help of the Americans, we crushed ISIS, we fought for them. The Americans asked us to do anything, and we did everything. Now they want to get rid of us. This is the feeling on the street. People are burning on the inside.

“When the report came out about Trump’s call yesterday to Erdoğan, we were optimistic that this might help us. But this morning the Turkish media is saying that all of those statements about Trump telling Erdoğan to stop bombarding us were false, that Trump did not say any of those things. And, anyway, we have not seen any actions on the ground. We are very disappointed. We just want the jets to stop attacking us. From the ground, our forces are able to defend us, but when they come from the sky and hit civilians we are helpless.

“Dozens of my friends and neighbors have been killed, many more badly injured already. And the bombardments will surely go on again tonight. If this lasts for one more week, we’re all going to die of hunger. There’s no bread, no food coming. We’re surrounded on three sides by the Turkish and one side by the Syrian government, and nothing is being allowed in or out. Two or three million people could die of hunger.

“During the daytime, we’re outside watching for the planes. When they appear, we try to hide and find cover. At night, if there’s power and we can get something charged, we watch the news and look for any hope that this might be solved, and who might solve it.”