Kurdish Town Cizre Destroyed by 80% in Turkish Crackdown - Lawmaker

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Four-fifths of the Kurdish town of Cizre has been destroyed as a result of the Turkish crackdown on the minority, a member of Turkish parliament from the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) said Thursday.

"80 percent of Cizre is already destroyed, including even those parts that were not under a blockade before," Dirayet Tashdemir told reporters at a press conference in Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.

He estimated the death toll in the town less than 2 miles north of the Syrian border at nearly 300 residents. Eighty-six have died in the Sur district of the unofficial Kurdish capital of Diyarbakir, followed by 74 in Idil and 32 in Nusaybin, he added.

"In total, around 600 people have been killed in the Kurdish regions, and 99 of them were children," Tashdemir stressed.

Relations between Ankara and the Kurds, who comprise some 25 percent of the country's population, have been progressively worsening. Ankara has been carrying out a campaign against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which seeks to create a Kurdish state in parts of Turkey and Iraq, since the summer of 2015 following a deadly suicide attack in Suruc. Ankara considers PKK a terrorist organization.

In February, Kurdish activists claimed Turkish troops had burned some 150 civilians to death in basements in the town of Cizre in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak.