Victims’ families of Kobani massacre call for punishing ISIS detainees
ALEPPO, Syria (North Press) – Families of the victims of the violations committed by the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) in the city of Kobani, northern Syria, seven years ago, demanded that fate of the ISIS detainees is revealed.
This came on the seventh anniversary of Kobani Massacre when ISIS militants sneaked into the city dressed in Kurdish forces style and managed to kill and wound many.
On June 25 2015, due to ISIS invasion of Kobani, 253 people were killed and 273 others were wounded, most of them children, women and elderly.
It was the second-largest massacre committed by ISIS since it declared a caliphate in June 2014.
Sometime before that night, the People’s Defense Units (YPG) had managed to expel ISIS from Kobani.
The YPG is a mainly-Kurdish group affiliated with of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that was formed in 2011. It mainly operates in areas run by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava.
The AANES was first formed in 2014 in the Kurdish-majority regions of Afrin, Kobani and Jazira in northern Syria following the withdrawal of the government forces. Later, it was expanded to Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa, Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) defeated ISIS militarily.
Kobani residents described that night as a “night of treachery.”
Nabil Kajal, a resident of the village of Barkh Batan in the countryside of Kobani, who lost his parents and sister that night at the hands of ISIS militants, said that 29 people from my village died due to ISIS attack of the city, most of them were children and elderly.
“Most of those who were injured, numbering about 300, have a permanent disability,” Kajal said.
“In addition, most of the victims were of children, most of whom were less than two months,” he told North Press.
Most of the ISIS members who participated in the massacre were arrested by the security forces, he stressed.
Kajal called on Social Justice Council and the legal bodies of the AANES to reveal the fate of the ISIS arrestees, and to expedite their trial, as more than seven years have passed since the massacre.
Muhammad Hajj Kendo, a resident of Kobani and a brother of one of the victims of the massacre, said, “when the ISIS militants were arrested, there were promises to speed up their trial and disclose their fate after they committed the most extensive violations against civilians, but that has not happened.”
“The families of the victims have the right to know the fate of the arrested ISIS militants, in addition they must be punished for the crimes they did,” Kendo added.