(8 Nov 2014) Perwin Mustafa Dihap, a 19-year-old female Kurdish fighter who died in the defence of the Syrian border town of Kobani, was buried on Friday in southeast Turkey.
She is among the latest casualties of the fierce fighting that has engulfed Kurdish-dominated Kobani, Perwin's hometown near the Turkish border besieged on three sides by extremists from the Islamic State group.
Barely out of school, she wanted to follow in the footsteps of three of her older siblings and go to war.
Before long, she was on the front line.
Just two months later, Perwin lay dying in a hospital across the border in Turkey, badly wounded in an October 6 mortar attack on her position in the city.
Perwin's journey started when she signed up for service in her native Kobani.
After six months of basic training, Perwin was initially assigned to the police force, said her mother, Fatma Isa Dihap.
But the young girl insisted she wanted to be in the thick of battle.
So it was her mother herself who took Perwin to join up.
Two of her other children are already fighters: a son in the battle for Kobani and a daughter fighting in the Syrian region of Afrin, near Aleppo.
"I took her to the comrades and told them: 'I present my daughter to Kurdistan'," said Fatma.
It was a sacrifice she was prepared to bear despite already having buried three of her children, explained her son Kemal.
One of her sons was killed in 1996 fighting in the Kurdish guerrilla war, another was killed in a car crash and a third died in an accidental drowning.
"After she got to the front line, they faced very heavy fighting there. Sometimes we communicated with her over the phone and we told her to take care of herself. She was saying 'Don't worry my comrade, resistance is life.' Three days later we got news that Perwin was wounded," said her 34-year-old brother, Kemal Mustafa Dihap, as he stood outside the morgue in the Turkish border town of Suruc, some 18 kilometres (11 miles) from Kobani.
The doctor told Perwin's family the young woman's chances were slim, despite her surviving a five-hour operation.
As her condition deteriorated, doctors transferred her to two other hospitals in larger Turkish towns in an effort to save her.
In the last two days, she was too weak to speak.
Perwin died in the early hours of November 5.
Perwin, the youngest of originally 12 children, was buried alongside Emina Mahmoud, believed to be 22, in a joint funeral.
Like many Kurds killed in Kobani, Mahmoud's family had not been traced in time for the ceremony at the cemetery where many of the Kurds who die fighting in Kobani are being buried.
The two were among hundreds of women fighting in the Women's Protection Units, or YPJ.
Kurdish women have fought alongside men for decades in a guerrilla war seeking an independent Kurdistan that would encompass parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
About 200,000 people have fled into neighbouring Turkey, whose border lies along Kobani's northern side.
"I am happy and I am proud of my daughter, she is the martyr of Kurdistan and Kobani," said Fatma Isa Dihap as she prepared to bury her youngest child.

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