In the hospital in Derik, Syria, the air is thick with the sound of shouting and crying. There are muffled sobs as women hold each other tightly. One helps another to stand upright, as tears threaten to send her to her knees.
The supporting woman explains that her friend’s brother was killed in last night’s air strikes on this part of north-east Syria.
He was working inside the electricity station that was fired on by a Turkish warplane. “He was so young”, she says. Grief is everywhere here.
Outside the street is filled with cars. Inside, the hospital foyer is thronged with people.
One of them is Souad Khalaf. Her daughter Hevrin was a noted Kurdish politician who was shot dead along with her driver when their car was ambushed in October 2019.
It happened days after Turkey launched a ground incursion across the border into Syrian territory.
“At midnight we heard loud noises around Taqil Baqil village, where the power station is,” she explains. “Then we lost our electricity. We couldn’t sleep because of the bombing. In the morning we heard about all the people who were killed and injured. Two of the dead were my relatives.”
Read more: BBC
