The Kurdish National Council recalls the Amouda Cinema fire massacre
ARK News… On Monday, the Amouda locality of the Kurdish National Council in Syria commemorated the sixty-third anniversary of the Amouda Cinema fire massacre.
The commemoration ceremony took place in the presence of members of the Kurdish National Council parties, a number of political figures, and the people of the city of Amouda.
In an interview with Rebaz News, Muhammad Omar Sheikhmous, head of the Amouda locality, said: “Today we remember the massacre in which hundreds of children were killed. At that time, there was not a house left in Amouda without a child martyred from it,” adding that “our destiny as Kurds has always forced us to make sacrifices.”
On Monday, November 13, marked the anniversary of the Amouda Cinema fire massacre in 1960.
Massacre details:
The city of Amouda in Syrian Kurdistan, 63 years ago, witnessed an event that will not erase the memory of the city, as it witnessed on 13 November 1960, the martyrdom of about 283 children their ages do not exceed 12 years.
The incident was known as the Amouda cinema fire, or the massacre of cinema, the children were invited by the director of Amouda town at the time to attend the film "The Ghost of the Midnight", which is not intended for children, in a cinema that cannot accommodate more than 200 people, while the number of children was up to 500 children.
The goal of this big school trip was to support the Algerian revolution through fundraising, but things did not go well. During the third screening at the “Shahrazad” cinema that day, a spark erupted from the old projection engine, extending the fire to the wooden walls, furniture, and bodies of terrified children.
Children flocked to the main gate, causing it to be closed as a result of their crowding, while some of them decided to jump from a window leading out of the hall, but what they did not know is that the window overlooking an open well underneath, causing the death of a number of them in it.
The people of the city heard the screaming of the children and rushed to their rescue, and during the intervention of the parents a wooden beam fell from the ceiling and killed a young man who saved about 12 children named Mohammed Said Agha Daqqouri.
One of the surviving children, Hassan Deri’i, became one of the most famous Syrian lawyers and recorded part of his testimony on the massacre, which had been registered against an unknown since the rule of the “United Arab Republic”, until the Al-Assad came to power, the lawyer came under pressure from the Intelligence Services following the publication of his book “Amouda is Burning ” in 2005.
160
