Border Patrol Kills Syrian Woman Trying To Enter Turkey

A Syrian woman who risked crossing over land mines to illegally enter Turkey was shot dead by Turkish border guards on the Syrian border.

Thirty-year-old Nezahat Celal, believed to be ethnically Kurdish from Syria's Derik city, attempted to cross into Turkey through a field of mines planted near Cizre district's Uğur village in Şırnak province. According to reports, border patrols spotted the woman and shot at her. It is not clear if the soldiers warned the woman to turn back.

The border guards later called an ambulance and the woman's body was taken to Cizre State Hospital. Cizre Mayor Leyla İmret and pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Cizre district branch chief Ali Akdeniz went to the hospital shortly after the incident. Celal's body was sent to the Diyarbakır Institute of Forensic Medicine for an autopsy on Thursday night.

Turkish media reported that the woman's husband had earlier fled the violence in Syria and come to Turkey, settling down in the Tarsus district of Mersin. Reports claim that the woman had attempted to cross into Turkey to see her husband.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)