KILIS, Turkey — With her pale face and dark circles under her eyes, Amal looks like she hasn’t slept in days. And she hasn’t, she tells Al-Monitor, because of the constant explosions in her neighborhood. Two days before, Amal and her children fled to Turkey with only a few suitcases, leaving everything else behind.
In a park near the Turkish-Syrian border, the woman describes why she had to leave her house in Aleppo, the home where she lived happily for more than 20 years. Surrounded by her three adult daughters, she said, “Day and night, we were afraid that one of those bombs might hit our building. I thought I was going to lose my mind."