Ayse Magi inspected the damage done to her modest home in the town of Cizre, tears in her eyes. Ms Magi chose to remain within the city despite a gruelling hour curfew that had been imposed on 14 December.
Now, the Turkish military has eased that curfew β although it will still hold between 7. Many reached the town at dawn, their vehicles loaded with personal belongings and children. Police carefully inspected their documents as well as the contents of their cars and bags.
Many of the returnees also found their homes obliterated. Shell casings littered the battle-scared streets of the Sur neighbourhood, where residents made a grisly discovery: the corpse of an unidentifiable male, on of a number of bodies reportedly found during the day. Kobani is a predominantly Kurdish town in northern Syria that suffered a brutal siege at the hands of Isis. Several shops and homes in the Sur area of Cizre had their walls blasted open.
Windows were shattered and doors unhinged, the smell of gunpowder still clinging to the breeze. Turkish military-imposed curfews remain in the historic district of the main Kurdish city of Diyarbakir β which is also called Sur β and in Idil, a district in Sirnak province, where Turkish forces are continuing operations against Kurdish militants. The army says more than Kurdish rebels were killed in Cizre.
Human rights groups claim that 92 civilians were killed in the town during the military operation. Ozturk Turkdogan, who heads the Ankara-based Human Rights Association, said an additional bodies have been retrieved from three basements in Cizre since Turkey declared the battle over on 11 February.
