Syrians brave life outside crammed Turkish refugee camps

Syrian refugee children play outside their tents at a refugee camp in Nizip in Gaziantep province, near the Turkish-Syrian border March 17, 2014. Aleppo continues to bear the brunt of the civil war, in which about 140,000 people have died. Almost two years after rebels grabbed half of the city, they are now on the defensive, with government forces advancing on three sides. Turkey began building its refugee camps near the border in mid-2011, little knowing the war would last so long and bring such vast numbers of people, many of them women and children. More than 220,000 Syrians are living in the Turkish camps, but some three times that number struggle to exist outside them. Some try and eke out an existence around southeast Turkey, the country's poorest region. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

GAZIANTEP, Turkey (Reuters) - Turned away three times since fleeing the bombardment of Syria's second city Aleppo in January, mother of eight Faten Darwish has given up on getting her family into a refugee camp in southeast Turkey.

Instead, the 33-year old lives with her husband and children in a dingy storage space made of breeze blocks with thin dirty mattresses lining the floor and just a single tap to wash from. Some of her young children shower at communal baths, she said.