YPG claims to have killed rebel commander in Afrin

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The People’s Protection Units (YPG) this week claimed to have killed a rebel commander in a series of operations in Afrin this month. 

During the second week of August, the YPG reportedly carried out a series of operations in the villages of Afrin’s Shera and Mabata districts. According to the YPG, several Turkish soldiers and rebel forces were killed.

“On August 8th, several days after being seriously wounded in a bomb explosion in Afrin’s Mabata district, mercenary commander Abdul Razzaq al-Bakr has died,” the YPG stated.

The YPG didn’t identify the group al-Bakr belonged too.

Moreover, the YPG, on 11 August, allegedly detonated a motorcycle-bomb on the road leading to the village of Kafr Jannah in Afrin’s Shera district, targeting a joint patrol conducted by the Turkish army and the Turkish-backed rebels. 

“While the death of a Turkish soldier and the wounding of another one has been confirmed, a number of mercenaries were killed as well,” the YPG further said.

Turkish-backed forces took control of Afrin in March and have since brought in settlers from other provinces, like al-Ghouta and Homs.

“Our fight in Afrin is to drive out those strangers,” Nuri Mahmoud, the spokesperson of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), previously told Kurdistan 24.

The YPG’ General Command previously said the people of Afrin “have never given up the resistance against the Turkish occupation” despite forced immigration, ethnic cleansing, looting, theft, and mass killings. 

YPG top commander, Sipan Hemo, told Asharq al-Awsat last week that the YPG’s military operations in Afrin continues and will grow in intensity with time.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the YPG has carried out over 100 attacks against forces controlling the area.

Hasan Şindi, a leading Kurdish member of the Turkish-backed Afrin Council, on Sunday said he fled to Europe, claiming he was a target for assassination. 

The Kurdish news outlet ANF accused him of having ties to the Turkish intelligence MIT. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this summer asserted the casualty number for the US-armed Kurdish forces defending Syrian Kurdistan’s northwestern Afrin enclave stood roughly at 4,500. Information on the deaths of Turkish soldiers, rebels, and Kurdish fighters have yet to be independently verified.

Editing by Nadia Riva