JINHA

AMED - On the first day of the three-day Eid al-Fitr holiday, many Kurdish women have spent the day in graveyards, visiting the children taken from them by war.

Besile Narin headed to the Yeniköy Cemetery in the main Kurdish city of Diyarbakır to visit her son Ali, who died last year in the battle for Kobanê. Hundreds of Kurdish youth died defending the city, located in the Rojava autonomous region in Syria, from attacks by the Daesh gang.

"To pass the holiday with our children, we fill these places," said Besile, who said that every mother wants to wake up on the first day of Eid to see her children. "The Daesh gangs, supported with the hands of the state, are taking our children away from us every day." However, Besile said, today and every day she is committed to seeing a just and peaceful end to the war that she lost her son to.

"We mothers will pick up where our children left off," said Besile. She called for an end to the war and the release of Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), from prison as steps to peace. "We are calling on those in power as mothers: let them take concrete steps and end the war."

(be-do/gc/cm)