Family mourns father killed in Turkish airstrike 4 years after son slain fighting IS

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – An Erbil family is in mourning for a father killed in a Turkish airstrike in northern Syria just four years after his son was killed fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) in the same town.

The Ahmed family, who fled the northern Syrian town of Tel Tamr in 2011 following the outbreak of civil war, has lost two generations in recent attacks on their homeland.

Ahmin Ahmed, in his 20s, died protecting the village of Badia in the Tel Tamr area when ISIS militants besieged the town in 2015. A member of the People’s Protection Forces (YPG), he was among 11,000 Kurds who died fighting the terror group. 

His father was killed in the very same place just four years later.  

Ahmin’s father Izadin left Erbil for Syria in February to tend to his land. He was killed in a Turkish airstrike on October 18 while helping civilians in his village of Bab al-Kheer, near Tel Tamr, following an earlier attack.

Alan Ahmed, Izadin’s surviving son, told Rudaw English on Monday his father was a volunteer who wanted to help his fellow Kurds displaced by the Turkish invasion.

“My father went to Rojava to help his people from the Turkish offensive that aims to invade our land,” Alan said, using the Kurdish name for northern Syria. “He was a civilian who aimed to help other civilians, not a fighter.”

The family was left reeling just days after another death, when Alan’s cousin Ahmed, a journalist, was killed in fighting between Turkish troops and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain) on October 14.

Ahmed was killed alongside two other reporters while working for the SDF- affiliated media agency Hawar news.

Operation Peace Spring, Turkey’s military incursion into northeast Syria, began on October 9 with the stated aim of clearing the border of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and resettling up to 3 million Syrian refugees currently sheltered in Turkey. Kurds say the move amounts to ethnic cleansing.

Kurdish authorities estimates at least 300,000 civilians have been displaced and more than 200 killed since the beginning of the Turkish offensive 

Amnesty International published a report on Friday that detailed evidence of war crimes and a “shameful disregard for civilian life” by Turkey and its Syrian proxies. 

Compiled from witness accounts gather between October 12 and 16, the report denounced a vast array of war crimes and human rights abuses committed against civilians in the Kurdish region, which have “wreaked havoc on the lives of Syrian civilians”, according to Amnesty International’s Secretary General Kumi Naidoo.

On October 6, Trump announced the withdrawal of US troops from northeast Syria, greenlighting a Turkish onslaught against the Kurds. The international community has condemned the mass displacement and civilians deaths. 

Syria’s Kurds, who led the US-backed ground war against ISIS, feel betrayed by the US decision to leave.