CIZRE // Residents returned to the flashpoint town of Cizre, in southeastern Turkey, on Wednesday to find many of their homes destroyed and at least one body still lying inside a destroyed house.
The first wave of arrivals reached the town at the break of dawn, after authorities partially lifted a 24-hour curfew that had been imposed to facilitate security operations against Kurdish militants.
Many of their vehicles were loaded with personal belongings and, in many cases, children.
The level of damage in some neighbourhoods evoked the early days of military conflict in neighbouring Syria with buildings gutted by shelling or partially collapsed. Shell casings littered the streets of the Sur neighbourhood where residents made a grisly discovery – the corpse of an unidentifiable male.
The stench of death also rose from the rubble of a collapsed building in the same area. Residents said the basement had been used a shelter and that it was demolished by the security forces.
“Those who did this are not humans,” said Cizre resident Serif Ozem. In the battle-scarred Sur neighbourhood, several shops and homes had their walls blasted open, gaping craters offering a peek into the daily lives disrupted by the curfew imposed on December 14. Windows were shattered and doors unhinged, the smell of gunpowder still clinging to the morning breeze.
The round-the-clock curfew was scaled down on Wednesday, although it will still hold between 7.30pm and 5am.
The reprieve comes three weeks after authorities declared the successful conclusion of military operations to stamp out rebels linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
Curfews remain in place in the historic district of the main Kurdish city of Diyarbakir – which is also called Sur – and in Idil, a district in Sirnak province, where Turkish forces are continuing their operations against Kurdish militants.
In Cizre, Ayse Magi, a mother of five, inspected the damage done to her modest home with tears in her eyes. Two mortars had punctured the ceiling of her bathroom and hallway.
She is among many residents who were displaced by the fighting but chose to remain within the city despite the grueling 24-hour curfew.
“The shelling came all the way here, there is no way we can live here,” she said.
The government insists the operations were inevitable, arguing that “no country in the world would allow armed terrorists to roam its streets,” and says the curfews were necessary to protect residents.
Prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu has promised to reconstruct Cizre and other districts ruined by the fighting.
* Associated Press