Elementary and secondary school students gathered Wednesday in front of the United Nations offices in Qamishli, northern Syria to protest the killing of nine children in the strategic northwest town of Tel Rafaat two days earlier in Turkish shelling.

Turkey and its Syrian proxies shelled the town on Monday as the children were leaving school, killing nine children and one man. Thousands of people attended their burials on Wednesday morning. 

At least 20 more, including eight children, were wounded in the attack.
 
The town is home to thousands of Kurds who were displaced from Afrin in March 2018 after it fell to Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies. 

The students in Qamishli held placards calling on the international community to act and stop further Turkish attacks.

“Children’s rights organisations... where are you?” read one placard. Another compared Monday’s incident to the massacre of Kurds in northern Iraq, now the Kurdistan Region, in 1988.

The attack was condemned by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Monday.

UNICEF said it was “shocked and saddened” by the incident. 

The attack brings the death toll of children in the last four weeks to at 34, not counting the ninth child who later succumbed to their injuries, UNICEF said. 

“The number of children killed is increasing as relentless violence continues in several parts of Syria,” the UN agency added. 

Another group of protesters gathered outside a Russian military base in Tel Rifaat, condemning Moscow’s failure to respond to the attack. 

Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched Operation Peace Spring on October 9 to drive out the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syrian and resettle millions of Syrian refugees who have fled to Turkey since Syrian civil war erupted in 2011.

Photos by Delil Souleiman / AFP