People in Maxmur Camp entered the 15th day of resistance against the siege by Iraqi soldiers.

The army arrived in Maxmur on 20 May and tried to surround the camp by barbed wire fences. The camp residents reacted to the attempt and since then are keeping a vigil day and night to prevent the siege.

Background

Maxmur Camp is home to about 12,000 people with official UN refugee status. These are people who were displaced from their villages in Turkish territory thirty years ago and their descendants. Members of almost every family have died in the Kurdish liberation struggle, and many are still fighting with the guerrillas in the mountains for a dignified and free life with their own identity.

The camp, which is officially under the protection of the UNHCR, is described by Turkey as a "hotbed of terror" and has been continuously attacked by drones for years. The Barzani family, which collaborates with the Turkish state, imposed an embargo on the camp in 2019. Only a few years earlier, KDP chairman Massoud Barzani had visited Maxmur to thank the residents and the PKK for their successful efforts in defending Kurdistan against the so-called "Islamic State" (IS). In 2014, the ISIS hordes were just outside Hewlêr (Erbil), the seat of government of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.