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Before Mar Elia opened its doors to the refugees, it was run by two priests and a handful of volunteers. Now the number camping in the churchyard is 704 and there are 25 volunteers. Street smells permeate: washing, cooking, cigarette smoke. During the first week, the only thing I could hear was crying, Father Douglas Bazi, the parish priest, says. They were destroyed. The feeling of sadness is absolute. Everyone has lost a home, lost stability.

I visit a family in tent number 86. Nissan Potrus is a thickset man in his late 40s with a warm manner. He introduces me to Bernadette, his wife of 28 years, who is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the tent, washing clothes in a blue plastic bowl. The washing machine, he says. A pharmacist with Caritas, the Catholic aid and development agency, Potrus had a very good life in Qaraqosh. Bathrooms, showers, washing machine, TV, he says. I feel very sad, very angry. It is very difficult to be here.

Father Douglas Bazi, the parish priest whose church, Mar Elia, in Erbil, has more than 700 refugees in its grounds PHOTO: Anastasia Taylor-Lind

Christians mostly ethnic Assyrians had lived in Qaraqosh almost as long as Christianity itself. Potrus had no reason to expect radical militants would turn on the city. But then Isils mortar shells began to fall. He grabbed some money and ran out of his house with his wife, six children and grandchildren. He saw shrapnel sticking out of the body of a dead woman. Close by were the bodies of her two children. It is very difficult to see these things, he says. He left his car behind an Opel, German, very expensive because I wanted to get out quickly. The roads were blocked with people frantic to escape.

Mar Elia Catholic church is one of six churches in Erbil doubling as a shelter for some 3,000 families PHOTO: Anastasia Taylor-Lind

They walked for nearly five miles and then hitched a ride in the back of an oil truck. He only had enough money for three nights in a hotel in Erbil, where they washed the oil out of their clothes and slept safe. Then he came to Mar Elia on the recommendation of a Christian in the city. Two of his daughters were studying at Mosul university. They are now cleaners in Erbil. What does he do during the day? I help my wife clean the tent and think about home.

Ranine, Potruss 30-year-old daughter, crawls into the tent with a bag of clothes: a new delivery of international aid that still carries an Iraqi Airways tag. There is excitement because the family desperately need clothes. This is all I have, Potrus says, pointing to his check shirt and trousers. Ranine is dressed in what appear to be childrens pyjamas.

The bag contains one sock; a pack of ties; a low-cut black cocktail dress; a baggy pair of old tracksuit bottoms with a broken elasticated waist. The family is silent. I will use them to wash the floor, Bernadette says.

Nissan Potrus, who fled Qaraqosh with his wife, Bernadette, and their six children

PHOTO: Anastasia Taylor-Lind

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Exclusive: Inside the refugee camps of northern Iraq