HASAKEH: Hundreds of Syrian Kurds staged a protest in northern Syria on Sunday in response to a deadly attack targeting members of the ethnic community in Paris this week.
A gunman opened fire at a Kurdish cultural center and a hairdressing salon in Paris on Friday, killing three Kurds.
The suspected gunman, a 69-year-old Frenchman, was arrested and later confessed to a “pathological” hatred for foreigners, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.
The semi-autonomous Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria called for the Sunday protest in Hasakah, which drew hundreds of people brandishing photos of the three victims and calling for accountability.
“Kurds are fighting against oppression and they are massacred everywhere, even in Paris, the city of love and freedom,” said feminist activist Evin Basho, 33, demanding that the killer be brought to justice.
She was among those who marched through the city chanting “the martyrs of Paris are forever in our hearts” and repeating slogans against “the extermination” of the Kurdish people.
Often described as the world’s largest people without a state, the Kurds are a Muslim ethnic group spread across Syria, Turkiye, Iraq and Iran.
Protester Azad Suleiman, 55, told AFP he felt Kurds were being targeted in the diaspora and at home.
“This is a war against our people, targeting us in the four parts of Kurdistan and even in Europe,” he said, adding he had high hopes that the French authorities would bring the perpetrator to justice.
“We will not concede to the enemies in Kurdistan and we will not abandon our revolution,” Suleiman said.
Furious Kurdish demonstrators had clashed with French police after the attack, which revived the trauma of three unresolved murders of Kurds almost 10 years ago in the same area of Paris.
French President Emmanuel Macron described Friday’s killings as an “odious attack” against Kurds and ordered the Paris police chief to meet with leaders of the Kurdish community.
Syrian Kurds protest against Paris attack
https://arab.news/62x6p
Syrian Kurds protest against Paris attack
- Protestors chanted slogans against “the extermination” of the Kurdish people
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
