Kurdish Red Crescent calls to free staff detained by government in Aleppo attacks
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The Kurdish Red Crescent (KRC) demanded on Monday Syria’s transitional government to release three of its staff members detained during the recent attacks on the Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo city, northwestern Syria, while carrying out humanitarian duties.
Speaking to North Press, Dilgesh Issa, co-chair of the KRC, said the organization lost contact with several of its staff working in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods, after the second day of the attacks.
Issa explained that the KRC were operating two facilities in the area—one for prosthetics and another as a medical clinic—as well as an ambulance.
He noted that images and videos circulating on social media, along with materials published by the Syrian transitional government, showed three KRC members in government custody.
He identified the detainees as Rami Hussein al-Ali, who worked in the prosthetics department; Abdulrahman Mohammed, a paramedic who was performing his humanitarian duty transporting the injured and wounded; and Yusuf Hanan Hamoko, an ambulance driver with the KRC.
Issa appealed to humanitarian and international organizations to intervene and work toward the release of the detained Kurdish Red Crescent staff.
In a related development, Issa said that 118 injured people from the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods had arrived at the Dayr Hafir crossing and were later transferred to hospitals in Raqqa, Tabqa, and Hasakah.
He added that most of the wounded were in very serious condition, the majority of them women and children, along with a number of Internal Security Forces (Asayish) members in Sheikh Maqsoud. The injuries included shrapnel wounds, fractures, and abdominal and chest injuries.
The co-chair of the Kurdish Red Crescent noted that no accurate count of civilian casualties has yet been conducted, due to ongoing tensions and the difficulty of accessing the area on the ground.