Kurds living in Cyprus on Sunday held a demonstration in Limassol calling for an immediate halt to Turkish airstrikes in northern Syria and Iraq.

The protest began at 3pm from the the Kurdistan Cultural Centre Theofilos with protesters marching towards the Limassol district administration located in Governor’s Square.

With placards against Turkey, some of which calling for ‘freedom in Kurdistan’, Kurds were protesting Saturday night’s Turkish attacks.

“We call on every democratic citizen, party or organisation to condemn the new Turkish attack,” organisers of the protest had said before it began.

“The silence of the international community kills Kurds and we must all realise this, especially here in Cyprus, where after all we have a common enemy, fascist Turkey,” the Cyprus-Kurdish Solidarity Association’s Fivos Faros said.

Representative of the Kurdish Party in Cyprus Yassin Tarbus called for the assistance of an international community to stop Turkey. “They hit our areas. They have been preparing for years for what is happening. Noone tells them to stop,” he said.

Turkish warplanes carried out air strikes on Kurdish militant bases in northern Syria and northern Iraq overnight, destroying 89 targets, Turkey’s defence ministry said, in retaliation for a bomb attack in Istanbul that killed six people one week ago.

The strikes targeted bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey says is a wing of the PKK, the ministry added.

Ankara has blamed Kurdish militants for the blast on Istanbul’s Istiklal Avenue on November 13 that killed six people and injured more than 80.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack on the busy pedestrian avenue, and the PKK and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have denied involvement.