Dohuk, Iraq: In the past week, they have started emerging at about 7pm each night: bedraggled Syrian Kurds fleeing the Turkish bombardment of their villages and towns to the safety of Iraq.

The two receiving areas in Sahela, on Iraq's far north-western border with Syria, held 282 people on Tuesday night, brought in by people smugglers from as far afield as Afrin, in Syria's far north-west, and as close as Qamishli, a two-and-a-half hour drive from the border.

"We went from Qamishli to a village and stayed in a house until the smuggler came and told us it was time to leave," Amina Abdulkhaleq, 25, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday. "Then after the sun went down we were taken into a field and the smuggler took us to the border on his horses."

Amina Abdulkhaleq, 25, looks out at the Syria-Iraq border from the relative safety of an Iraqi receiving centre for refugees. Credit:Kate Geraghty

Abdulkhaleq's mother, who is diabetic and can barely walk, fell off her horse along the way.