Eight-year-old Sipan Farhadi. Photo: Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Eight-year-old Sipan Farhadi was playing football with two of his friends during a family gathering in Duhok’s Bamarne district on Thursday when bombardment struck the area, injuring him and killing the two boys.
Local families regularly gather in Bamarne for picnics, but they were sent fleeing when the bombing commenced.
Kurdistan Region’s Directorate General of Counter Terrorism (CTD) said the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was behind the attack. PKK-affiliated media blamed Turkey for the bombing.
Turkey regularly bombards the PKK positions in the Kurdistan Region. It launched a fresh offensive against the group in Duhok province in April.
“I went upstairs while Yousif and Avand went to bring the ball back off the street and when I came down, a bomb hit the ground,” Sipan told Rudaw’s Naif Ramadhan.
“Yousif told me to bring water because there was a dirty glass and we wanted to clean it,” he added.
Exactly three days before the tragedy, 13-year-old Yousif Kovan was talking to his father about the upcoming end of the school year. His father promised to reward him with a big prize for his hard work, but Yousif never made it to the last day of school.
“I wanted to grant my son a big prize. He was not only my son, but he was my friend, and he was always with me even when things were not going well,” Kovan Haji, Yousif’s father, said.
Yousif was not the only child who lost his life that day. Avand Hashiyar, 9, was also killed. Sipan was the lucky one, despite sustaining slight injuries in the stomach area and arm.
The families explained that the bombs came from Metina mountain, only meters away from them.
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