On the 14 December 2015, the Turkish Government announced a twenty-four hour curfew for the city of Cizre. As in other places, the Turkish military used heavy weapons to bomb residential areas. According to BBC, the total death toll was "up to 160". Around 20 January Turkish military opened fire without warning on a group of unarmed Kurdish civilians waving white flags, thereby killing two and wounding nine people. The video journalistRefik Tekin filming the incident was shot in the leg and later accused of being a member of a terrorist organisation. Turkish state media reported: "Three terrorists were neutralised and nine others wounded". The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concerns and urged an investigation. During the military operations in the weeks before the massacre on 7 February there were reports about people trapped in basements, some of them wounded, and that the government denied emergency ambulance access. Cumhuriyet published a recording of a telephone conversation with the citizens in one of the basements. In another recording it is reported that Turkish security forces burned about 20 people alive after pouring gasoline into a basement, and that they were playing music used by the ultra-nationalist or fascist organisations Grey Wolves and MHP.
Cizre basement massacre
The violence peaked on 7 February 2016, when more than 150 civilians were killed by Turkish security forces, reportedly many burnt alive. The same sources claim that the evidence shows these were intentional massacres and deliberate executions that "cannot be explained only as a result of the fighting." Some of the claimed dead were allegedly children as young as nine to 10 years old. Some of the totally burned corpses could not be identified. As reported by IPPNW, according to the Human Rights Association 178 unarmed people were killed by the Turkish military and their bodies found in three basements. The same is reported by Kurdish sources. Turkey called these accusations "baseless terror propaganda" used as "recruitment tools". According to the UN Turkey refused to allow a UN team to conduct research in the area. The UN says it has reports that more than 100 people were burned to death while sheltering in basements in Cizre. There was no crime scene investigation and no judicial authority was allowed to enter the basements. Instead the Turkish authorities arranged that the ruins were flattened, the basements filled up with rubble, and bodies were taken away. Therefore, Human Rights Watch suspects a cover-up.
