AFRIN: Thousands of Kurds gathered in Syria's Afrin Saturday to mourn fighters and civilians killed in a blistering Turkish assault on the region - including female combattant Barin Kobani.
But there was no casket for the young woman fighter.
Her mutilated body appeared in a shocking video published earlier this week, prompting accusations by her family and Kurdish officials that she was "defiled" by Turkish-backed rebels.
Family members have yet to retrieve her corpse from those rebels and could not bury her alongside 17 other fighters and civilians during the mass funeral on Saturday.
"They all have their burials, except my daughter Barin," said her shell-shocked mother, surrounded by wailing mourners carrying posters of the woman in her early 20s.
"They tore up her body. She doesn't get a funeral. Oh, my daughter."
Footage published this week by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights showed the lifeless body of a woman lying on the ground, surrounded by a dozen men, some armed.
The woman's sweater is pulled above her head and trousers dragged low, revealing a large blackened abrasion from her chest down to her bellybutton.
One man is seen stepping on her left breast.
The lifeless body was identified by Kurdish officials and locals who knew Kobani.
The Britain-based Observatory said it received the video from a Syrian rebel fighting as part of Turkey's two-week assault against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which control Afrin.
Kobani, whose real name is Amina Omar, took up arms in 2014 to battle Daesh as it swept through parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
She joined the Women's Protection Units (YPJ), the all-female arm of the YPG, and fought Daesh in the border town of Kobane in 2015 and in the jihadists' self-styled capital Raqa last year.
The YPJ on Friday announced the death of four of its fighters - including Kobani - and accused Turkey-backed factions of "mutilating them."
YPJ spokeswoman Nesrin Abdullah told AFP that Kobani and the other three female fighters were caught up in clashes with the pro-Ankara rebels, refused to withdraw, and "fought until death."
"I swear to God, we'll avenge you," cried out Kobani's brother, thirty-year-old Aref Mustafa Omar, at Saturday's funeral.
Sweat poured down his face and mixed with his tears as he sobbed next to his other sister, brother, and their elderly, stoic mother.
He told AFP that his sister had detonated explosives she was carrying because she did not want to be taken hostage.
"They defiled her dead body brutally, unnaturally. They put her on their media to show their masculinity,"said Omar.
"She was a saint," he said, before his face turned a yellowish colour and he collapsed.
Men and women of all ages paid their respects to the Kobani family at the funeral, telling her mother that Barin had become a symbol.
"She's not just your daughter, she's our daughter too," one mourner said.
Turkey, which has blacklisted the YPG as a "terrorist" group, launched its offensive on Afrin on January 20.
It has bombed and battled Kurdish fighters in northern Syria multiple times in recent years, as have rebel factions allied with Ankara.
Turkey has provided political and military support to Syria's fractious opposition since the uprising began in 2011.
The video of Kobani's body sparked outrage in the Kurdish community and on social media, prompting calls for an investigation.
Syria's exiled opposition government, which is based in Turkey and oversees an array of rebel factions, said it had begun investigating the incident.
"We have formed a committee to... determine the accuracy of allegations of mutilation of the fighter's body by the national army," it said in a statement.
And the Istanbul-based National Coalition opposition grouping condemned the actions in the video as "criminal acts."
Syrian Kurds mourn female fighter shown mutilated in video
Syrian Kurds mourn female fighter shown mutilated in video
Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza
JERUSALEM: The military arm of the Palestinian militant group Hamas released a video Saturday of a man identifying himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
In the video, whose date cannot be verified, a man addresses US President-elect Donald Trump in English and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Hebrew.
The military arm of the Palestinian militant group Hamas released a video Saturday of a man identifying himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. (AFP/File)
Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike
- The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen
- The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment
GAZA: Gaza’s civil defense agency said three aid workers were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Hamas-run territory on Saturday but the Israeli army said it killed a “terrorist.”
The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen. The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.
The Israeli army said it had “struck a vehicle with a terrorist that took part in the murderous October 7 massacre,” referring to militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel last year.
“The claim that the terrorist was simultaneously a WCK worker is being examined,” it added in a statement.
Civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the bodies of “at least five dead were transported (to hospital), including (those of) the three employees of World Central Kitchen.”
“All three men worked for WCK and they were hit while driving in a WCK jeep in Khan Yunis,” Bassal said, adding that the vehicle had been “marked with its logo clearly visible.”
The Israeli army insisted its strike in the main southern city hit “a civilian unmarked vehicle and its movement on the route was not coordinated for transporting of aid.”
In April, an Israeli air strike killed seven WCK staff — an Australian, three Britons, a North American, a Palestinian and a Pole.
Israel said it had been targeting a “Hamas gunman” in that strike but the military admitted a series of “grave mistakes” and violations of its own rules of engagement.
The October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 44,382 people in Gaza, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
Several wounded in two Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, health ministry says
- Later on Saturday, another person was injured in a separate Israeli strike on Al Bisariya
- The Israeli military said it had attacked a Hezbollah facility
CAIRO: An Israeli strike on a car wounded three people, including a seven-year-old child, on Saturday in the south Lebanon village of Majdal Zoun, the Lebanese Health Ministry said in a statement.
Later on Saturday, another person was injured in a separate Israeli strike on Al Bisariya, which lies near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said it had attacked a Hezbollah facility in Sidon that housed rocket launchers for the armed group.
It added that it had also hit a vehicle in southern Lebanon loaded with rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and military equipment as part of its actions against ceasefire violations.
A truce came into effect on Wednesday, but both sides have accused each other of breaching a ceasefire that aims to halt over a year of fighting.
West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief
- MI6 head Richard Moore cites ‘terrible loss of innocent life’
- ‘In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state’
LONDON: The West has “yet to have a full reckoning with the radicalizing impact of the fighting, the terrible loss of innocent life in the Middle East and the horrors of Oct. 7,” the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 has warned.
Richard Moore made the comments in a speech delivered to the British Embassy in Paris, and was joined by his French counterpart Nicolas Lerner.
Moore said: “In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state. And the impact on Europe, our shared European home, could hardly be more serious.”
Daesh is expanding its reach and staging deadly attacks in Iran and Russia despite suffering significant territorial setbacks, he added, warning that “the menace of terrorism has not gone away.”
In October last year, Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, said his agency was monitoring for increased terror risks in the UK due to the Gaza war. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in over a year of fighting.
In Lebanon, a 60-day truce agreed this week between Hezbollah and Israel brought an end to a conflict that has killed thousands of Lebanese civilians.
Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say
- Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City
The Israeli military said it killed a Palestinian it accused of involvement in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in a vehicle strike in Gaza, and is investigating claims that the individual was an employee of aid group World Central Kitchen.
At least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across Gaza overnight and into Saturday, with most casualties reported in northern areas, medics told Reuters.
Later on Saturday medics said seven people were killed when an Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle near a gathering of Palestinians receiving aid in the southern area of Khan Younis south of the enclave.
According to residents and a Hamas source, the vehicle targeted near a crowd receiving flour belonged to security personnel responsible for overseeing the delivery of aid shipments into Gaza.
Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City, according to a statement from the Gaza Civil Defense and the official Palestinian news agency WAFA early on Saturday.
The Gaza Civil Defense also reported that one of its officers was killed in attacks in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, bringing the total number of civil defense workers killed since October 7, 2023, to 88.
Earlier on Saturday, WAFA reported that three employees of the World Central Kitchen, a US-based, non-governmental humanitarian agency, were killed when a civilian vehicle was targeted in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
The World Central Kitchen has not yet commented on the incident.