Four people from the northern Syrian city of Hesekê died after they were caught by the Turkish gendarmerie (military police) while crossing the border and driven into mined areas. The four slain civilians belonged to a group of ten who tried to cross the border from Rojava to Mardin’s Kızıltepe district as refugees. The horrific execution was reported by the Mezopotamya news agency (MA), which cites the statement of one of the survivors.

According to this statement, the group was noticed by the gendarmerie on October 5 as they tried to cross the border, and six of them were caught. One person managed to escape into Turkish territory, and three people got stuck in the border area between the wall and the barbed wire. The Turkish forces then shoved a flashlight into the hand of one of the detainees and forced him to search for the three people in the mined area by force. The gendarmerie first beat him with rifle shafts and shot in front of his feet to force him to run. The victim crawled on his knees into the mined area. When the four fugitives ran away from the shots between the border wall and the area delimited by barbed wire, a mine exploded and all four were killed in the detonation.

The dead bodies were taken to the mortuary of the state hospital in Kızıltepe, while the other five fugitives have been held in the gendarmerie ward for three days. Apparently no official arrest has been made and the victims claim to have been mistreated and threatened in order to keep the incident quiet.

The incident only became known when the victims were brought before the public prosecutor's office for deportation. 16-year-old A.J. testified that the group paid a smuggler called "El Zub" a thousand dollars per person to cross the border. A.J.'s elder brother died in the mine explosion.