Syria: Anger at mutilation of Kurd female fighter

AFRIN:Syria’s

Kurds on Saturday accused Turkey-backed rebels fighting them of mutilating and then filming the body of one of their female fighters, after a video emerged of her corpse.

Turkey and allied Syrian rebels have since January 20 pressed an offensive against the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria, whose Kurdish fighters Ankara views as “terrorists”.

A Kurdish official identified the young woman as Barin Kobani, who took part in a US-backed campaign to drive the Islamic State jihadist group from the northern town of Kobane.

The Kurds in a statement blamed the “terrorist allies of the enemy Turkish state” for mutilating the body of Kobani, who was a member of the all-female Kurdish Women’s Protection Units.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain- based monitor, said it received the video from a Syrian rebel fighting with Turkish forces in the Afrin offensive.

The rebel told the Observatory the footage was filmed on Tuesday after rebels found the young woman’s corpse in the village of Qurna near the Turkish border in the north of the enclave. In the footage, a dozen men, some armed, gather around the badly mutilated body of a woman lying on the ground.

The Kurdish community reacted with outrage and social media users shared online a portrait of Kobani smiling next to another shot of her brutalised body. “Barin did not surrender, she fought to the death,” said Amad Kandal, an official with the Women’s Protection Units, vowing to avenge her comrade’s brutal murder. AFP