The main hospital was damaged in the town that has seen the fiercest clashes between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Turkish army with their allied Syrian militias. The border town is a focus of Turkey’s military offensive against the Kurdish-led force.
The Kurdish Red Crescent attempted to evacuate the injured on Friday, but was not successful. They were blocked on the way by Syrian militias, Rudaw’s Viviyan Fatah reported from Tal Tamr, where the medical convoy originated.
On Saturday they tried again, joined by the humanitarian group Free Burma Rangers and was able to reach the hospital when the militias held off their fire.
“The Free Syrian Army, which works for the Turks, had been attacking us. They stopped. A way was open,” explained David Eubank, founder of the Rangers. “We went in a line of ambulances along with our Free Burma Rangers ambulance. We got the patients out – about 37 wounded – out quickly, less than an hour,” he explained to Rudaw in Tel Tamr.
Four bodies were also brought out of the town, but more are buried under rubble and “there are wounded people we could not reach,” the Kurdish Red Crescent stated, appealing for a formal humanitarian corridor to be established.
At least 30 of the wounded were taken to Qamishli’s Farman Hospital. "We have taken out some of the people with serious injuries,” said the Kurdish Red Crescent’s Dr. Dilgash in Qamishli.
Qamishli’s hospitals are so far able to cope with the influx of patients, "but if conditions worsen, we can send them to the Kurdistan Region,” Dilgash said.
A 13-year-old boy with severe burns from a suspected chemical weapon attack in Sari Kani is being transferred to a hospital in Erbil for specialized treatment.
Dilgash said it was too early to tell if any of the injured newly evacuated from Sari Kani had been hit with chemical weapons.
The United States negotiated a pause in hostilities in Sari Kani on Thursday evening that gives the SDF five days to pull out of there and another border town, Gire Spi (Tal Abyad), hand over their heavy weapons, and move southward some 32 kilometres to the M4 highway, after which Turkey would commit to a full ceasefire.
Both sides have accused the other of violating the truce.
With reporting from Viviyan Fatah in Tel Tamr and Roj Eli Zala in Qamishli
