JINHA

NEWS CENTER – After police killed 13-year-old girl Cemile Çağırga in the Kurdish town of Cizre, images of her mother wrapping the body in ice packs while waiting for a police blockade to lift have displayed the sorrow of the besieged town.

Throughout the weekend, Turkish police and soldiers continued a nonstop assault on the town of Cizre in Northern Kurdistan. On Sunday night, Turkish state snipers shot 13-year-old Cemile Çağırga, a teenage girl. Like many of the at least seven residents killed in just a few days, Cemile could not be buried because of the police blockade on her neighborhood.

Police have refused to allow ambulances in and out of neighborhoods, let alone hearses. Cemile’s family kept her body in their home while waiting for police to lift the blockade. A photograph has spread on social media showing Cemile’s mother wrapping her dead daughter’s body in makeshift ice packs to delay its decomposition.

Cemile was among four of those killed whose bodies were kept unburied in the besieged Nur neighborhood for two days. After negotiations by the Peoples’ Democratic Party Parliamentary representatives for the province, police finally permitted the bodies to be taken out of the neighborhood yesterday. The bodies of Cemile; 35-day-old baby Muhammed Tahir Yaramış; 18-year-old Osman Çağlı; and 19-year-old Sait Çağdavul were transported to the provincial capital of Şırnak for autopsy.

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