Displaced families return from Kurdish Afrin region to Damascus
ALEPPO, Syria (North Press) – Sixty displaced families returned on Monday from Afrin countryside in northwestern Syria to their original homes in the Damascus countryside, through coordination between humanitarian organizations and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor in the Syrian transitional government.
Abeer Fares, an NGO official supervising the return, told North Press that the families’ homes had been restored prior to their return.
She added that the convoy, comprised of five buses transporting approximately 300 people, along with trucks carrying personal belongings, was expected to arrive in Damascus the same day.
According to Fares, the return is part of a joint government-humanitarian initiative to facilitate the voluntary return of displaced persons from camps to their hometowns after years of displacement.
Since 2018, the Kurdish region of Afrin has been under the control of Turkish forces and their allied Syrian armed groups, following a military offensive that displaced approximately 300,000 original residents to other parts of northern and eastern Syria. In the aftermath, factions affiliated with the Syrian National Army (SNA) relocated their own families, along with others opposed to the Assad regime, to settle in Afrin. However, as the Assad regime’s grip weakened and areas fell from its control, many of these families have begun returning to their places of origin, gradually leaving the Kurdish region.