Last month, it was reported that Turkish forces surrounded a burning multi-storied building and locked up people inside. Some 150 people were reported to have been killed in the fire. However, no official confirmation has been made.
RT correspondent William Whiteman was among the first journalists to visit Cizre and tried to figure out what is happening in the region.
It was difficult to get authorization to enter the town, and after several days of waiting the team made it.
Answering the question on how many people were killed in Cizre, she said: "300, 400… maybe 500 people. They were old men, women, and children. They even killed pregnant women."
Holes from artillery shelling can be seen everywhere, not only on the walls of destroyed buildings.
The bodies of those killed in the operation have already been removed. But the smell of death still hangs in the air across the city. More bodies are likely to be buried in the ruins.
In the basement floor of another building, the journalists found one more place where Kurds were burned. One Cizre resident said that 45-50 people were killed there.
"They were beheaded. I witnessed the autopsy. I know what I’m talking about. They were beheaded and burned," he said.
Since December 2015, the Turkish Armed Forces have been carrying out a large-scale operation in southeastern parts of Turkey, mostly inhabited by Kurds. Human rights organizations have repeatedly reported mass killings among civilians.
Many buildings in Cizre were totally destroyed, and many others were damaged by fire.
In January, a Turkish human rights organization revealed that over 160 civilians had been killed in the Kurdish area since the beginning of the operation. Ankara has insisted that the operation targets only militants of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). However, the Turkish military has been accused of a multitude of atrocities in the region.
"Wounded residents of Cizre hid in basement floors. We couldn’t even send an ambulance to them. Nearly 200 people were killed in Cizre," Kurdish activist Nurcan Baysal told RT.
In late February, in Strasbourg, some 3,000 Kurds took part in a protest against the Turkish military operation in Cizre.
