"The situation has become unbearable," explains Mikhail Gouriel, deputy mayor of Dashtetakh, a small village that lies just two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the Turkish border.

Dwarfed by the surrounding mountains, the village of 250 mainly Chaldean Christian residents sits in a valley under the watchful eye of Turkish observation posts. Even in normal times, it is practically deserted.

A large Turkish flag with its white crescent on a red background is painted on the mountainside and stares boldly at Dashtetakh.

"Every day the Turkish soldiers fire mortar shells," said Gouriel, pointing to the empty border stretch separating his village from the Turkish lines where the Hizel river flows.

"They say they are targeting the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) but they haven't been here in over a month," he insists.

Turkey has long demanded that Iraq stop the PKK from using its territory, cut off logistical support to the group and hand over rebel leaders to Turkey.

The party has been fighting for self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984 and its fighters take refuge in remote camps in northern Iraq.

Most of the villagers, some of whom have come from the violence-stricken Iraqi capital, have already fled.

"The women and all the children have sought refuge in Zakho because they were scared of the bombing," said Gouriel, referring to the nearest main town.

"There are only 10 to 15 men left and only three women," he told AFP.

Under the safety of daylight, the men tend their land, but at night, they shut themselves in their homes to escape the shelling.

"This year the crop was lost because our fields were burnt by the shelling of the Turkish army," protests one farmer.

"We are all Christian refugees from Baghdad or Basra," in the south, said an angry Petro Chalmon, originally from southern Iraq. "We fled the terrorism and now it is the Ottomans (Turks) attacking us."

There is even talk of economic sanctions. Turkey supplies Iraqi Kurdistan with electricity and cross-border trade between the two countries is worth several hundred million dollars a year.

"Here, it's the end of the world. There is no electricity, there is no gas, we have generators that we only switch on for several hours a day in order to save," adds Gouriel, who was wounded during Iraq's war with Iran in the 1980s.

Sitting in his home, where he hangs a photo of Pope Benedict XVI, he is unimpressed with the central government in Baghdad.

"They do nothing for us, to solve the problem with the Turks. They probably think that this is not Iraq and that we are not Iraqis," he said.

Busy tending to her garden, Nadine Mussa is one of the three women who refused to leave Dashtetakh.

"We're all scared of the Turks, but where are we supposed to go? It is the village of our ancestors," she said.

"We have come back for better or for worse," she said in Arabic. She does not speak Kurdish.

Her main task, like the other two women, is to feed the men.

She hopes things will improve in her little village in a valley despite pressure inside Turkey for the government to launch a military incursion into northern Iraq against PKK bases.

"The women and children will come back and the school will reopen. And if the situation improves in Baghdad one day, we will go back there."