Ambulances gathered in front of a hospital in Diyarbakir (Amed), Turkey on April 18, 2026. Photo: Screengrab / Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Lightning struck a village schoolyard in Turkey's southern Diyarbarkir (Amed) province on Saturday, killing two children and leaving another seriously wounded.
“They went under a tree and the lightning struck them,” Hussein Yeshil, a relative of the victims, told Rudaw. He added that one of the children who lost his life was 14 and the other was 15 years old.
The children left Lexeriye village, where they reside, and traveled to Rihanok, where the school is located. “It happened there,” he said.
The school was closed for the weekend when the incident occurred.
Recep Yeshil, another relative of the victims, told Rudaw that if schools were in session “it could have been a horrific catastrophe.”
“Perhaps many students would have lost their lives, one cannot know,” he added.
Lightning has led to substantial human losses in Turkey. Between 1930 and 2014, nearly 900 fatalities and around 150 serious injuries due to lighting were recorded in the country, according to a joint study between the University of Manchester and the Technical University in Istanbul published in 2015. About 86 percent of the casualties were in rural and agricultural areas.
Mashallah Dekak contributed to this report from Amed, Turkey.
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