30 July 2016•Update: 31 July 2016
By Idris Oukutuja
DOHUK, Iraq
The head of Syria’s Kurdish National Council has accused the PYD – the Syrian arm of the terrorist PKK – of confiscating medicines sent by Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) to people wounded in a bombing attack Wednesday.
Speaking late Friday to Anadolu Agency, Ibrahim Berro said, "The PYD structure has confiscated medicines sent overland by the government of the Kurdish region to the wounded from the Qamishli bombing attack,” adding that the PYD stored the medicines near the bombed city, ensuring that they don’t reach the hospitals where wounded civilians are being treated, some in critical condition.
As to why the PYD took the medicines, Berro said, “The structure [PYD] deals with all humanitarian assistance in terms of the political dimension. And it wants to have everything under [its] control."
He also explained that regulations prevented the wounded from receiving treatment in or being sent to Iraq’s Kurdish-region hospitals.
However, Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, has ordered hospitals of the region to receive the wounded of Qamishli.
A huge blast by an explosives-laden vehicle in the city of Qamishli on Wednesday left dozens killed and wounded.
The city is near Turkey’s border and the Turkish town of Nusaybin.
Daesh-linked websites have published a statement by the terrorist group assuming responsibility for the explosion, adding that it targeted the headquarters of Kurdish units in the city.
The PYD is the Syrian branch of the terrorist PKK, which has since 1984 targeted Turkish security forces and civilians.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests – which erupted as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings – with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the U.N.
The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, put the death toll from the six-year conflict at more than 470,000 people.
