An eight-year-old girl was found dead in a river in Turkey three weeks after vanishing while on her way back from a Quran course at a mosque.
Narin Güran was discovered in a river, a mile from her home in the Bağlar district of Diyarbakır.
Her body – still dressed in the same clothes she was wearing on the day she went missing – was put in a sack with stones in it after she was killed and was concealed under branches and rocks.
The child was last seen while walking with friends in the Tavşantepe neighborhood on August 21.
Security footage shows her separating from the group to head back home using a hill path.
Her disappearance sparked a nationwide hunt alongside a social media campaign called ‘Find Narin’.
Thousands of police officers and search-and-rescue teams were deployed to find Narin.
On Sunday, Turkey’s minister of interior Ali Yerlikaya confirmed in a statement on X that the youngster’s remains were located.
‘Unfortunately, the lifeless body of our daughter Narin, who went missing in the Tavşantepe neighborhood of the Bağlar district of Diyarbakır, was found by our Gendarmerie teams,’ he wrote.
‘May God have mercy on our daughter. May she rest in peace. Our condolences.’
Diyarbakır governor Murat Zorluoğlu said during a press conference: ‘Narin was found today in the stream covered with stones.
‘According to initial findings, after Narin was killed, she was put in a sack and brought to the stream bank, placed in the water and covered with bushes and stones to give a natural appearance.’
Local prosecutors have since detained at least 21 people, justice minister Yilmaz Tunc said.
According to Turkish media outlet NTV, Narin’s parents and her eldest brother were among those called in for questioning.
Meanwhile, the girl’s uncle, Salim Guran, was arrested last week on suspicion of murder and ‘deprivation of liberty’.
The investigation is understood to have revealed that the DNA samples taken from his car matched DNA samples taken from her clothes.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to ‘personally follow’ the judicial process to ‘ensure that those who took Narin away from us receive the harsh punishment they deserve.’
He added: ‘The tragic news of Narin’s brutal murder has deeply wounded us all; our sadness is indescribable.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
