AUTONEWS

Syria, travel to the border with Turkey between jihadists ready to escape and families without shelter


Sun, 13 Oct 2019 11:21:07 +0200

Yesterday morning we went to Hasakah. By pure chance the network still worked outside the urban area of Qamishli, when from the Corriere we were informed of a car bomb in Hasakah against one of the most important Kurdish prisons with over 2,000 dangerous Isis jihadist detainees in revolt. Last the change of route. Instead of focusing on Kobane, the city-symbol of the struggles of the Kurdish people against ISIS, bombed by the Turks the other night, we turned left to go south in this dusty town that is on the border between the Arab regions around Raqqa, until three years ago stronghold of the Caliphate, and the Kurdish Rojava. Shortly afterwards the news came that the Syrian Sunni militias under the command of Ankara had blocked the road between Qamishli and Kobane, a few tens of kilometers ahead of us. A frantic messaging between drivers. The unpleasant feeling of being surrounded. But live. Hevrin Khalaf, one of the most famous political women of Rojava, was not so fortunate. She had left just before us. According to her advisers, she would have been killed by a grenade just by going to Kobane. Meanwhile, rumors of burning cars, fighting, kidnapped people arrived. Later the Kurdish commands claimed to have driven the enemies back north. But there are no independent sources to confirm it and no journalist has yet gone to verify it in person.