SIHA — the acronym sounds like the name of a pop starlet. But for some villagers in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast region it spells death. SIHA stands for “Silahli Insansiz Hava Araci,” Turkish for Armed Unmanned Airborne Vehicles, or UAVs.

On Aug. 31 an armed drone belonging to the Turkish air force dropped its payload on four locals as they were picnicking near the village of Ogul in Hakkari, a remote province near the Iraqi border. It was the day before Eid al-Adha. Mehmet Temel died and the other three were injured, one gravely, in the attack. “They left my son’s three children fatherless. … They turned our [Eid] into poison,” wept the victim’s mother as she related the tragedy to members of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP).

The Hakkari governor's office confirmed a day later that an armed drone had dropped a bomb on four PKK fighters and what it called four “collaborators” who had assembled with the “terrorists” in the area. The statement read that authorities had established that the discovery of the alleged meeting took place after, not before, the men were struck. “In other words, their supposed crime was uncovered after they were attacked with no prior warning of any kind — it's called extrajudicial killing,” said Sezgin Tanrikulu, a prominent human rights lawyer and member of parliament for the main opposition Republican People’s Party.

The statement further explained that following the attack, the men checked into a local hospital “using their own means.”