Altinozu, Turkey (CNN) -- Mazen Hajisa has a secret. Amid the olive groves of Turkey just a stone's throw away from the Syrian border, he has hidden away several Styrofoam boxes. Their contents are deadly: a dozen unexploded antipersonnel mines. He took one out and brushed dirt off its green molded plastic case. It was about the size of a soup bowl and stamped with Cyrillic letters. Hajisa pointed at a raised black cross on the top of the device. "If you put pressure on this trigger," he said, "It will explode." Hajisa's deadly stash of booby-traps are just a fraction of more than 300 similar devices he claimed he and several other Syrian volunteers dug up from the border between Syria and Turkey over the last two months.
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Syria began mining its border with Turkey a few months ago, Hajisa says
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Mazen Hajisa says it's his duty to help refugees flee the Syrian regime
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Rami Bakour's foot was blown off by a mine explosion
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"I didn't know there were land mines," he said, while recalling the fateful afternoon earlier this month, when he tried to flee with his family across the border to @placeholder.
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Turkish doctors were scheduled to operate on @placeholder's stump once again on Thursday, to clean fragments from his maimed limb.
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The violence has forced thousands from their homes, many of them seeking refuge in @placeholder.