Turkish aggressions against Syrians escalate

Turkish border guards swept into Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) near the Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishlo in northeastern Syria, killing one Syrian civilian in Tal Abyad and wounding another in Afrin.

QAMISHLO, Syrian Kurdistan (Kurdistan24) – On Sunday, the Turkish border guards swept into Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) near the Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishlo in northeastern Syria, killing one Syrian civilian in Tal Abyad and wounding another in Afrin.

In the Kurdish city of Qamishlo, residents told Kurdistan24 that a group of Turkish soldiers with two tanks crossed the Syrian border into the outskirts of the city.

“The tanks went over the border barbed wires, made their way inside the Syrian lands. The Turkish armed soldiers followed the tank and shouted at some farmers who were working in their fields adjacent to the borders,” said Shekhmous Ali, a Syrian Kurdish farmer from Qamishlo.

On the northern vicinity of the Kurdish-held town of Tal Abyad on the Turkish border, the Turkish border guards shot a Syrian who was working at his farm near the Turkish border.

The Syria-based Kurdish ARA News Agency also reported “Mahmoud Ajaj, a 34-year-old Syrian farmer, was shot by the Turkish border guards, transferred to the local hospital in Tal Abyad, and then succumbed to his injuries while being transferred to the Syrian Kurdish-held border town of Ras Al-Ain (known as Serê Kani in Kurdish).”

In the Kurdish-controlled city of Afrin in northern Syria, the press office of the Syrian Kurdish forces of People’s Protection Units (YPG) said in a statement released on Monday that the Turkish forces on the Syrian borders are becoming increasingly aggressive.

“A 20-year-old Syrian civilian was shot by the Turkish border guards while trying to cross the border into Turkey,” the statement read.

“The injured was transferred to a clinic in Afrin.”

Turkey has repeatedly assaulted its southern borders with Syria since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Most recently, seven civilians were wounded on Thursday when a rocket coming from Turkey’s city of Nusaybin hit a stadium in Syria’s Kurdish city of Qamishlo.

 

Reporting by Hisham Arafat

Editing by Ava Homa