Turkey must end attacks on Rojava civilian infrastructure: monitor

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey must stop targeting critical civilian infrastructure in northeast Syria (Rojava), Human Rights Watch said on Friday, calling for urgent action to address water, fuel, and health care crises that have resulted from the Turkish airstrikes.

“The repeated strikes on civilian infrastructure have left many essential facilities in ruins, rendering hospitals, bakeries, and water facilities inoperable. Fuel, needed for cooking, heating, and farming, is running out,” the rights monitor said in a report.

“As the crisis in Northeast Syria escalates, action is needed to mitigate the humanitarian impacts on the civilian population. Türkiye should immediately stop targeting critical civilian infrastructure, respect international humanitarian law, and hold to account those responsible for serious violations,” said HRW.

Hiba Zayadin, Senior Researcher at the HRW who penned the report, told Rudaw late Friday that “the sectors most affected were the civil infrastructure such as water stations, electric power and oil facilities, and the only domestic gas station operating in the north.”

She added that "This affects the deprivation of millions of residents' access to basic services, especially while we are in the winter season."

Turkey launched a new wave of airstrikes on Rojava after 12 of its soldiers were killed in the Kurdistan Region last December by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

On December 16, the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) that governs Rojava, said that more than 2,600 villages were left in complete darkness as a result of Turkish airstrikes targeting power stations in the city of Qamishli. Oil fields, refineries, and hospitals were also among the key targets of the Turkish army. 

Turkish state media reported on the same day that Ankara had destroyed nearly 50 facilities allegedly belonging to the PKK in Qamishli, Kobane, and Amuda, and that “high-profile terrorists” were targeted in the strikes.

In mid-January, the Turkish military resumed its strikes. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) stated on January 14 that Ankara’s strikes “constitute blatant and deliberate war crimes aimed at causing maximum harm to the lives of civilians, instilling fear, and inflicting suffering on their daily existence.” 

Electricity and water stations were knocked out of service, forcing clinics and bakeries to stop working, and hospitals have to rely on emergency generators for power, according to the Kurdish Red Crescent. 

According to farmers and officials, Turkey’s strikes have also caused an oil spill into a local river that is an important source of water for farmers who have had to stop irrigating their land.

Turkey has carried out several air and ground operations against the PKK in the Kurdistan Region and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Rojava, which comprises the backbone of the US-backed SDF but Turkey alleges is the Syrian front for the PKK.

Updated at 9:18 pm