A woman and her child were crushed to death by a Turkish armored vehicle in a village in Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported.
The armored vehicle, belonging to the Turkish military, crushed a woman and her child to death on Monday during a patrol in the village of Atareb, northwest of Aleppo. The woman and child died at the scene. Residents of the village protested by throwing stones at the two armored vehicles in the area.
Today, a convoy of #TAF crushed a mother and daughter while passing through the town of Atarib in the western countryside of #Aleppo, causing them to lose their lives. After this incident, the people showed their anger by stoning TAF vehicles. pic.twitter.com/Phk9GFzCuN
— Abdussamed Dagül (@AbdussamedDgl1) December 5, 2022
According to a report by the SOHR, another young girl was trapped under an armored vehicle in Ras al-Ayn province in northeastern Syria in early November and then dragged under the vehicle as Turkish soldiers left the area without attempting to help the girl.
In January Abdulgaffar Dayan (23) died after he was hit by an armored police vehicle in the southeastern Turkish province of Şırnak. According to local reports the armored vehicle hit Dayan as he was crossing a street in Cizre. He was taken to the emergency room at Cizre State Hospital where he later died.
Sixty-seven children have been killed by armored vehicles, landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) in Turkey since 2011, according to a report by the Diyarbakır Bar Association.
In an interview Mehmet Emin Tümür, co-chair of the Diyarbakır branch of the Chamber of Mechanical Engineers, earlier said armored vehicles are too heavy and too large for residential areas. “These vehicles have too many blind spots, and it’s hard to sense your surroundings,” he said. “If these vehicles are driven above the speed limit, it becomes very difficult to control them.”
The killing of civilians by armored vehicles is common in Turkey’s Southeast, where there is a heavy military presence due to ongoing clashes between the Turkish military and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), in February rejected a parliamentary motion by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to investigate civilian deaths caused by armored vehicles in Turkey’s Southeast.
