Kurds killed, robbed by proxies of Turkey

SYRIAN Kurdish mother Shara Sido says the news came to her via a messaging application. She received an image of a bullet-riddled corpse with the instruction: “Come collect your son.”

Sitting inside a modest house in the de-facto Syrian Kurdish capital of Qamishli, the displaced 65-year-old scrolls through her phone to find a picture.

“This is the monster,” she alleged, showing AFP a photograph of the Syrian fighter she said confessed to shooting dead her 38-year-old son.

“They killed my son in cold blood,” she said, blaming Turkey-backed Syrian fighters.

Turkish troops and their Syrian proxies have overrun a swathe of northern Syria since October, after a deadly military campaign against Kurdish forces that caused tens of thousands to flee their homes.

Rights groups and displaced Kurdish families have accused Ankarabacked Syrian rebels of executions, home confiscations and looting in that border strip -- charges that Turkeybacked fighters deny.

Sido used to live in the border town of Ras alAin, before Turkey and its rebel proxies on October 9 launched an offensive against Kurdish forces they view as “terrorists”.

As soon as the invasion started, the mother of five and her family fled to Qamishli, carrying nothing but a few basic items.

Her son, Rezan, returned to Ras al-Ain one week later to collect personal documents and clothes for his three children, but rebels barred him from entering, she said.