Sides accuse each other of violating ceasefire
A British volunteer with Syria’s Kurds on Friday described her “horrifying experience” of pulling victims of Turkish air strikes from rubble, as fighting continued along the Turkish-syrian border despite a declared ceasefire.
Danielle Ellis had been part of a civilian convoy attempting to deliver aid to the border town of Ras alayn when it came across corpses among ruins.
The convoy stopped before reaching the town after they were warned they were within the firing range of gunmen from the Syrian National Army, an opposition group that is fighting alongside Turkish forces.
“We passed a pile of rubble in the last village before Seri Kaniye (the Kurdish name for Ras al-ayn), part of it was still smouldering,” the 29-year-old told The Daily Telegraph. “A few people decided to have a look. There were a lot of bodies. I counted 10, but there were other sites being worked on so there may have been more. It had been completely destroyed by air strikes. They were all adults, I’m pretty sure men.”
She said she also could not be sure whether they had been fighters with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or civilians. “One of the bodies I pulled out had a gun embedded in it. It could have been military but also many picked up arms to fight Turkey,” said Ellis, who has been a civil defence volunteer with the Kurds for almost a year.
“We got most of the bodies out but some of them we had to leave as they were under reinforced concrete.”
She said she would guess that most of the bodies had been there for several days. “All my clothes smell of death. It’s under my fingernails,” she said. “It was horrifying.”
Both sides accused the other of violating the fiveday ceasefire. Ras al-ayn seemed the immediate test of the truce.
Before the deal’s announcement, Turkish-backed forces had fought fierce resistance. After a brief lull, artillery fire and ground clashes were reported and by the evening more than 14 Syrian civilians were said to have been killed.
The Syrian Kurds raised further uncertainty over a ceasefire deal, which was announced after Mike Pence, the U.S. vice-president, held meetings with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, in Ankara. The Kurdish administration said some provisions of the deal, which was favourable to Turkey, “need further discussion with the United States.”
Meanwhile, Donald
Trump drew criticism for comparing the Turks and Kurds to children fighting in a park and said “a little tough love” was needed to broker a deal.