JINHA

KOBANÊ –Volunteers at the only bakery in Kobanê, forced to close for a period in the face of Daesh attacks, are now working to supply free bread to city residents. They say they are facing difficulties meeting the needs of returnees in the face of the destruction wrought by Daesh and the border controls imposed by the Turkish state.

As residents slowly return to the city of Kobanê, institutions are struggling to meet the needs of the people. The Daesh attacks that started on September 15 made most services in the city virtually unusable.However, the collective effort to restore Kobanê'scheap or free civil services continues. The city's single bakery distributes free bread from early morning until night.

Before the Daesh attacks, the canton government operated three bakeries. After the attacks, two closed. The single bakery remaining kept up 24-hour services with 100 employees for a time until the Daesh occupation forced it too to close its doors. Four volunteers stayed behind to supply bread to the fighters in the Kobanê resistance during this period.

Now, the 70 volunteers who have reopened the bakery have been working to repair machinery broken during the attacks. Bakery director Ibrahim Salih says the bakery produces 150,000 loaves of bread per day, but they are trying to increase production.

"We're striving to make enough bread to meet the needs of the fighters struggling against Daesh and the citizens in the city," said Ibrahim. "But with the increasing population, our stores of flour and yeast are beginning to shrink. We're calling for help so we can help the citizens here and make sure they don't go without."

Volunteer Ferzat Ali says he was on the frontlines fighting Daesh until the bakery initially closed. Seeing that there was no bread for his fellow fighters, he and a few friends turned their small oven over to the task ofsupplying the resistance with bread. Under conditions of war, this was a difficult enterprise.

"Sometimes the cannons and mortars from tanks would fall close to our oven," said Ferzat. "There was a danger that the oven would be destroyed, but we knew that no matter what happened, we had to keep producing bread for our friends who were resisting so heroically. If we could bake under conditions like that, we'll keep baking under any conditions, so our people don’t go without."

(na/fk/mg/cm)