Pregnant mother of five killed as Turkey re-imposes curfew in Kurdish town

Merdin (K24) - 44-year-old Selamet Yesilmen was killed on Sunday, November 15, two of her children (10 and 14) were wounded in front of her house in the town of Nisebin (Nusaybin) in Mardin province when they left their home in the morning.

Kurdish Dicle News Agency reported that Yesilmen and her children were fired on from an armoured Turkish police vehicle. The local sub-governorate claimed in a statement released overnight that shrapnel pieces killed Yesilmen, although no explosion was reported in the area. In another incident, a woman named Shirin Bilgin (37) was killed when she went out on her balcony. A Kurdistan24 reporter says Bilgin’s relatives are blaming the Turkish police.

15 neighbourhoods, where clashes occur between Kurdistan Workers' Party-affiliated local youth and Turkish forces, in Nisebin have been under curfew since Thursday night. Water, electricity, Internet and telephone lines are down, including an international highway passing through the town that remains closed.

A first curfew that lasted for six days was imposed before, on November 1, in the town home to more than 80,000 people. During the clashes then, two civilians were killed reportedly by police snipers based on rooftops.

Elsewhere in Northern Kurdistan, in the town of Cizir (Cizre) in Sirnax (Sirnak) province, a curfew was announced overnight only to be lifted within hours on Monday afternoon. But during the short-lived curfew, a 65-year-old was killed, and five other civilians were wounded.

The town of Farqin (Silvan) in Diyarbekir province has recently been a focal point where a curfew was in place for twelve days until November 13. During the tense two weeks, seven people, among them civilians and PKK-affiliated armed teenagers, and two Turkish police were killed. On Monday, one more civilian died of wounds in a hospital where he was being treated.

(Hesen Kako and Sidiq Eren reported from Merdin and Diyarbekir)