Families who fled Syrian government and Russian strikes in northwestern Syria are sleeping in an olive grove near the Turkish border without enough food and no place else to go.

They are some of the 150,000 people who have escaped an upsurge in violence in the last major Syrian rebel stronghold in the last few weeks. It marks the most intense escalation between President Bashar Assad and his rebel enemies since last summer, with dozens killed in the shelling of insurgent territory.

"The house fell in over my children and grandchildren at night ... but God saved them, they emerged from the rubble," said a 70-year-old woman who gave her name as Aziza as she spoke under the shade of an olive tree.