Refugees flee Assad death squeeze Abu Khaled was woken at 4am on Friday by a friend with an urgent warning: militias loyal to Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president, were massing in a neighbouring town. It was the cue for a frantic exit by Mr Khaled, a long-time opponent of the regime who had seen the price paid by people in the central city of Homs for their open resistance. Within hours, he and about 150 others from his community were packed into a convoy of cars, pick-up trucks and tractors headed for the nearby Turkish border and the sanctuary of a refugee camp on the other side. "We didn't expect all this to happen so soon," said Mr Khaled, who asked for the name of his town in the northern province of Idlib not to be revealed, for fear of reprisals against the people still there. It was very hard. It was so cold, and we didn't have time to pick up anything. Mr Khaled's sudden departure is part of wider flight by Syrians over the past few days from existing or likely conflict zones, with the UN saying that up to 2,000 people were trying to cross the border to Lebanon on Sunday. Now in Turkey, Mr Khaled and other newly arrived Syrians spoke of the shadow cast by the regime's bombardment and recapture late last week of the Bab Amr district of Homs - and of their fears that they could be next on the target list. "The army kills everybody: women, children, no difference," said one of Mr Khaled's fellow townsmen, who gave his name as Abu Adel and said his nephew had been shot dead by the shabbiha, regime militiamen, about six weeks ago. Mr Adel and his companions were on Sunday getting used to their new home amid the white tents and billowing transparent plastic roof coverings of the Reyhanli refugee camp in southern Turkey. Gathered in the wind-chilled lee of the hills that now separate them from their country a handful of kilometres away, they said a number of "buffer zone" opposition towns in the area around their community had come under attack, making them fear that they would soon be in danger. Like other northern Syrians, they see it as only a matter of time before the regime moves in to crush resistance in Idlib as it did in Homs and other protest centres, such as Hama and Deraa, the southern city where the uprising against Mr Assad's regime began almost exactly a year ago. "You can't live in Syria now," said a man who asked to be called Abu Adel, a red and white keffiyeh wrapped around his face to hide it in photographs. It's like a ghost country. He and others from the same town as Mr Khaled said that 300-500 members of the rebel Free Syrian army remained there to defend the community and four others nearby. The overwhelming majority of these were defectors from the government army, they said, highlighting how the strong control that Mr Assad has over the senior officers from his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, contrasts with the opposition towards him among many Sunni Muslims in the military rank and file. But one lesson that the refugees in Reyhanli have learnt from Bab Amr is that the defectors" rifles and rocket propelled grenades are ultimately no match for the regime's shells and armour. For Mr Khaled and many other frightened Syrians - dedicated Assad opponents and non-activists alike - escape now seems the only option from what they see as a death squeeze by regime forces. "In the last few days, they were closing in and attacking all the communities around us," Mr Khaled said. They are trying to isolate each part.