'Turkey killed Mother Ayşe as she prayed'

ZehraDoğan/JINHA

KANDİL - The women of the village of Zergelê, where less than a week ago eight civilians were killed in a Turkish bombing, described their loss to JINHA.

On August 1, between the hours of 4:15 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., Turkish jets bombed the village of Zergelê. The village is located in the Qandil region of the Federal Kurdistan Region in Iraq. Six of the 37 houses in the village were destroyed in the attack, and eight civilians (among them a pregnant woman) were killed. 15 were heavily wounded.

The Medya Defense Zones held by Kurdish guerrillas are an area of approximately 400 kilometers in the Federal Kurdistan Region. Qandil is just one area of this zone and contains 60 civilian villages. This region also includes the village of Kortek, where another Turkish bombing killed seven civilians in 2011. Four of them were children. The Xinêrê region, where Turkish armed forces targeted villagers heading to a mountain plateau on August 15, 2000, is also not far away.

The trip to Zergelê is a long one through craggy cliffs. Village women, crying out mourning dirges among the ruins, described the day of the attack. The bombing first targeted one house, killing an older woman named Ayşe Ahmed Mustafa. When the villagers headed to the scene to help the wounded, another explosion occurred. The second strike killed seven civilians. One of those killed in the bombing, HaybetResûlMuhammed, had lost her son and husband to Saddam Hussein's forces during Ba'ath rule, it emerged. Her brother Salih was also killed.

We found SennurMele Ahmed, a village woman, looking among the ruins of her house--where just the window frame remains standing--for her saved money and gold. Ayşe Ahmet Mustafa, the bombing's first victim, was her mother.

"They call themselves Muslims, but they killed my mother as she prayed," said Sennur. "Erdoğan needs to go before a court and get punished. They say, 'the PKK is in the village.' The whole world can't be stupid enough to believe that.

"[The guerrillas'] job is fighting. If guerrillas are going to live in a village, in that case, why should they leave their mother's arms; why should they ever leave this village?" asked Sennur.

Another woman, BêxanEhmedHamdullah, we found sitting on the stones that were once her house with her three-year-old baby. As the camera approached, Bêxan raised her baby into the air.

"They left a baby in the cradle without a father," said Bêxan. "Would a guerrilla have a three-month baby? Does a guerrilla marry?" Bêxan's husband, KaruxXidir, left behind three children--one seven, one five and one still an infant. Bêxan said that her husband was not a guerrilla. In fact, he was a peshmerge soldier for the Federal Kurdistan Region government.

"Despite the fact that their father was a peshmerge, he was killed by the Turks with Barzani's permission," said Bêxan, referring to MasoudBarzani, the President of the Federal Kurdistan Region. "How will I tell them this?"

FerideEziz lost her husband Mecid in the bombing. On the day of the bombing, her husband heard the sound of the explosion and the wailing from outside. He jumped out of bed.

"He was picking up the wounded from the ruins. I was watching my children from afar. Then there was another attack; my husband was torn to pieces before my eyes," said Feride. "Turkey left me and my children to helplessly embrace y husband's lifeless body, crying. They gave me this pain. No one tell me about justice. I don't believe in it."

(fk/cm)