On Saturday refugees huddled in tents, their new homes, in northern Iraq, after fleeing relentless bombing and attacks by Turkey and its Syrian rebel extremist proxies in Syria. Up until October 6 they were living a peaceful life near pastoral landscapes, confident that the US flags they saw adorned to military vehicles that drove by from time to time would keep them safe. Then the United States backed a Turkish attack on their border towns by opening the airspace to bombing. On October 17 the US signed on to a Turkish pause in military operations until the towns are cleared while Ankara threatens to “crush the heads” of those who resist.Fearful of having their heads crushed, or being dragged to death as happened to the unarmed female politician Hevrin Khalaf on a nearby road, more than 200,000 people have fled the war made possible by the US decision to withdraw and unleashed by Turkey on October 9. Up to 1,800 of the people found refuge in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq on Friday. Poor and unable to carry much from their homes they told researcher and photographer 'A' their stories in an article at the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis.“We went to an urban area,” one man said, describing the relentless airstrikes and artillery attacks along the border. “Eight of our relatives were killed in the last days of airstrikes on Sere Kaniye.” For three days the family lived in the open before securing transport to northern Iraq. They had only one request to the world ‘Stop Turkey, stop the killing, provide humanitarian aid.” But there is no aid in Syria, the UN and other organizations have been slow to respond to the attacks on towns and cities along the border. The UN and NATO only asked for “restraint.”