Sixth day without news from the Cizre basement

It has been 6 days since the last news came from the basement in Cizre's Cudi neighborhood where 15 wounded, 7 slain and 9 exhausted people stuck in a basement for 14 days, still waiting to be rescued and hospitalized.

It has been 6 days since the last news came from the basement in Cizre's Cudi neighborhood where 15 wounded, 7 slain and 9 exhausted people stuck in a basement for 14 days, still waiting to be rescued and hospitalized.

As the Turkish state justifies the hindrance of access to the area on alleged grounds of “clashes in the area”, military and police forces deployed in the region are kind of leaving the people to die by disallowing ambulances, health teams and families of the victims to reach the basement.

The last communication with the basement took place 6 days ago when police attacked the wounded people who were trying to leave the basement as they spoke with HDP parliamentarians who were discussing the issue with officials from the Ministry of Interior Affairs. No life supplies including water could be found in the basement over the past 9 days.

The day before, HDP Co-President Selahattin Demirtaş called upon the government to open a human corridor to the town and declared that he was ready to join a team of medics and retrieve the wounded people. Members of the HDP delegation continue their correspondence with government officials on this issue.

Faysal Sarıyıldız, HDP parliamentarian from Şırnak, stated that Turkish armed forces have been preventing the access of ambulances and medics to the basement since the first day of the conflict, using fake armed confrontations as their excuse.

Yesterday, municipal ambulances were once again sent to the neighborhood to reach the trapped people and they managed to come as close as 300 meters to the basement but couldn't move further as the area came under fire of state forces upon their arrival.

While the artillery attack continued till the evening hours, Turkish units in the area forced the ambulances to turn back on grounds of security and "ongoing fighting".

Ongoing denial of medical access had caused the death of 7 of the wounded people in the basement by the time they were last reached six days ago. No information is available as to their situation since.

Yesterday, fire squads were also denied access to another building in the same Cudi neighborhood where -it came out- 37 other people were trapped in a house not far away. This building was similarly targeted by mortar attacks that started a huge fire, as a result of which 9 people inside burned to death due to obstruction of fire squads for intervention. The recent developments in the town indicate Turkish state's intention for a mass killing of Kurds under savagest conditions.