Refugee crisis: Three-year-old child among Syrian asylum seekers 'shot by Turkish border guards'

A three-year-old child is among the Syrian refugees shot while trying to reach safety in Turkey, witnesses have said as reports of attacks and brutality continue.

The Turkish interior ministry has denied allegations that its border guards are shooting and beating asylum seekers but footage obtained by Human Rights Watch (HRW) shows the bodies of men of women, as well as several injured people with gunshot wounds and extensive bruising.

During March and April of this year, the organisation documented five deaths, including a child, and said at least 14 others were wounded as border guards allegedly attempt to force Syrians back from the border.

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“While senior Turkish officials claim they are welcoming Syrian refugees with open borders and open arms, their border guards are killing and beating them,” Gerry Simpson, HRW’s senior refugee researcher.

“Firing at traumatised men, women, and children fleeing fighting and indiscriminate warfare is truly appalling.”

He accused the EU of letting Turkey “use live ammunition and rifle butts to stem the refugee flow” as deportations continue from Greece and borders remain shut across Europe.

The allegations come as refugees flee Syria following the breakdown of the “cessation of hostilities” agreed in February, with intense shelling in Aleppo and air strikes on civilian areas, medical facilities and refugee camps.

Victims and witnesses from seven alleged incidents between 1 March and 17 April said children aged three, five and nine were shot but survived their injuries in a group of refugees, while a 15-year-old boy was shot dead alongside a man and a woman.

Smugglers were also allegedly targeted, with one killed by a gunshot and another beaten to death, witnesses said.

Syrians living near the border claim they have also been shot at by Turkish border guards while trying to recover bodies.

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One survivor, who said he saw his sister and cousin shot dead near the Khurbat al Juz-Güveççi border crossing on 17 April, said they were part of a group of 20 relatives who attempted to flee bombing in Aleppo in March.

“Suddenly, when we were about 500 meters from the wall, we heard automatic weapons fired from the direction of the wall and bullets landed all around us,” he told HRW.

“The women started screaming and the children started crying, but the shooting continued. We all threw ourselves onto the ground, covering the children.

“I was lying close to my sister and my cousin, and the bullets hit them while we were lying down. They stopped screaming and shouting. I knew right away they had been killed.”

The man said he was shot in the hand and that one of his cousins and his daughters aged five and nine were also injured, but managed to crawl or be carried back to a Syrian village.

He returned to collect the bodies, allegedly being given 15 minutes to complete the task by a Turkish police officer before the shooting resumed, and found they had been shot in the back.

After the burials, the family returned to Aleppo to stay with relatives. “We won’t try and go back to Turkey,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

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Others said they had been beaten, showing bruises covering their backs and bodies, as well as evidence of broken bones after being caught, mostly near the Khurbat al Juz-Güveççi border crossing, near the Turkish city of Antakya.

A Syrian man who was attacked by border guards on 28 March said the smuggler he was with was beaten to death after the group was captured and taken to a police station.

Giving his name as Ghassan, he said he had fled fighting at home with his wife and two young children and was trying to cross to Turkey to find work to support them at the Salaheddin displaced persons’ camp in Syria.

“About six border guards beat us really badly for a long time,” the man said.

“They beat me all over my body and on my head. They used their fists and feet and sticks and rifle butts. I have no idea why they beat us.

“I was in so much pain I lost track of what has happening. Then I passed out.”

When he woke up dumped outside near the border wall, he said a smuggler he was with was pleading for help on the ground. Ghassan managed to alert people in Khurbat al-Juz but they returned to find him dead.

“It’s better to die in Syria than to die under torture at the border,” he said.

Turkey has so far completed more than a third of a concrete wall being built along its 560 mile border, fuelling a thriving human smuggling trade in attempts to avoid police and soldiers.

Some Syrians who managed to cross said they were detained and then forced back into Syria with dozens or hundreds of other asylum seekers, while at the Khirmash camp for internally-displaced people, a representative reported Turkish guards sending announcements from watch towers in Arabic telling refugees that anyone who approached the border would be shot.

HRW sent a letter with its findings to the Turkish interior minister on 4 May, calling on the government to launch an investigation, order guards not to shoot Syrians and to re-open its border to asylum seekers.

But an official denied that the incidents documented by the group occurred when questioned by the Associated Press and insisted that its border guards were not shooting at refugees.

The interior ministry said Turkey, which is home to 2.7 million Syrian refugees, has an open-door policy toward asylum seekers and was working in accordance with international law.

Additional reporting by AP