A Village Destroyed after Kurds Resistance to ISIS Attacks + Video

Sat Jan 31, 2015 11:02:34

This is what’s left of the Syrian village of Halimce after fierce fighting between Kurdish forces and ISIS.

The Kurds dealt the terrorists a blow after killing scores of terrorists and recapturing the village and nearby town of Kobani — but the victory came at a steep price for some 200,000 refugees forced to flee their homes, New York Post reports.

Many of those displaced from the liberated — but now largely destroyed — Kobani are settling into a refugee camp in Turkey, a few miles from the Syrian border, Agence France-Presse reported.

The eastern portion of the city of Halimce.

“They tell us Kobani does not exist anymore,” Adila Hassan, 33, said in the camp. “We do not know how long we will be staying here. We will return once the town is rebuilt, but that’s not going to happen soon.”

About 1,000 refugees have been streaming into the 2,470-acre camp daily, said its director, Mehmethan Ozdemir.

Even after getting the all-clear to return home, many displaced Kobani residents decided that the ­destruction was too much.

“In the current conditions, returning home is simply impossible to imagine,” said Cemile Hasan, 36. “Frankly, I’d be happy if we could be home in a year.”

On Tuesday last week, the town of Kobani, on Syria’s border with Turkey, was liberated by Kurdish militias after 112 days of clashes with fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The liberation has, however, come at a price, with monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimating that 324 Kurdish fighters and 12 civilians were among 1,313 deaths in the battle for the town.

The town’s infrastructure has also been heavily damaged.

 

 

 

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