Qamishli, Syria (North Press) – Hamza Hussein, 62, a resident of the city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria, suffers from a state of constant anxiety and fear of the recent Turkish military escalation in the area, especially since his house lies in a neighborhood near the Syrian-Turkish border strip.
The man who, like his fellow residents, lived through difficult days during the past period due to a series of Turkish attacks targeting Qamishli, which resulted in human victims, including children, fears that the shelling will cause a humanitarian catastrophe for his family, as what happened to other families.
Hussein said that he had concerns about his family and property to be affected by repeated Turkish shelling, “We do not know what to do.”
It seems very hard for the border city’s residents to protect themselves from the shells that no one knows when or where they will land, causing them a state of constant fear and anxiety.
On August 6, a Turkish drone targeted a car in al-Sina’a neighborhood (industrial zone), eastern Qamishli, claiming the lives of five people, including two children.
Three days later, four people were killed in a Turkish bombardment, which targeted a site in the village of Segirka in Qamishli countryside, on the Syrian-Turkish border.
A Turkish drone targeted a car in the village of Mulla Sibat, south of the M4 Highway, southwest of Qamishli, claiming the lives of at least three people, one day after the shelling that targeted Segirka.
Mowafaq Darwish, from Segirka, told North Press about the material damages to his house as a result of the Turkish shooting, “Four bullets penetrated the wall of the kitchen, and thank God that no member of my family was there at the time of the shooting.”
As a result of the panic, residents of Segirka flee to other neighborhoods in the city, and returned after hours of shelling stopped, amid fears of a repeat wave of shelling.
Residents of villages and neighborhoods in Qamishli, close to the borderline, live in a state of instability and anticipation, with Turkish drones flying every once a while.
On August 16, a Turkish shell landed on the village of Tel Jernek, west of the town of Amuda, in the western countryside of Qamishli. The scope of the shelling expanded to reach Hamdouna village in the same countryside.
After eight Turkish shells fell around them, the residents, who had woken up in terror from the sounds of the strikes, fled from the villages into the nowhere.
Less than hour later, Turkish artillery fired four shells at the village of al-Ibrahimiya in the countryside of Abu Rasin (Zirgan) north of Hasakah Governorate.
This happened after the neighborhoods of the city of Kobani and its countryside witnessed heavy shelling during the morning hours, and villages in the countryside of Tel Tamr, north of Hasakah, and others in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
Nazeer Omar, 42, owner of a construction workshop that works in a building near the Syrian-Turkish border in Qamishli, expressed his dissatisfaction with the interruption of his work, during the fall of the shells, on the area in which he works.