ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A first-year law student at the University of Kobane in northern Syria said she is determined to continue her education and seek justice after a nighttime bombardment left her with amputated legs and killed several family members.
An attack in January on the Kurdish-populated village of Kharab Ashk, about 40 kilometers southeast of Kobane, left Fatima Haji Mahmoud with both legs amputated and claimed the lives of five relatives.
From a bed in Kobane, Mahmoud spoke to Rudaw about her determination to finish her studies and pursue accountability.
“It was 11:30 pm; we were asleep,” she told Rudaw in an interview on Saturday. “Suddenly, there was a loud noise, and I felt my legs and my body burning. I opened my eyes and saw that everything around me had become a ruin; nothing was left.”
The shelling reduced her cousin’s home - where she had been staying with her brothers on January 25 - to rubble. Trapped beneath debris, Mahmoud tried to free herself.
“I moved the [concrete] blocks off my own legs to see what had happened to me. I saw that my legs were in very bad shape and wounded. I screamed,” she said. Her brothers reached her but were unable to pull her out immediately.
“We stayed in our wounds and pain until 9 am. After that, the villagers came and pulled us out and took us to the hospital in Kobane,” Mahmoud added.
That night, her cousin and her cousin’s son were injured, while other relatives were killed. Mahmoud said she draws comfort from the fact that her three brothers survived. She said one brother stayed by her side until help arrived.
“He told me: ‘Endure, don’t go, don’t die; our parents are waiting for us in the village, we will go back to them.’ With these words, they made me strong,” she said.
The artillery shelling took place amid a large-scale mid-January offensive by the Syrian Arab Army and affiliated forces groups against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
A day after the attack, the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) reported that Damascus forces carried out a “horrific massacre against a Kurdish family in the village of Kharab Ashk” near Kobane, condemning it as “a flagrant violation of all moral and human values.”
Earlier, the SDF accused Damascus-backed militants of carrying out “a massacre against the Bozan family” in a village southeast of Kobane, killing five family members and injuring five others by shelling.