Members of Turkish-backed armed groups wounded in Afrin infighting
North-Press Agency
On Tuesday, three members of Turkish-backed armed opposition groups were wounded following violent clashes between them at a checkpoint in the city of Afrin, northwestern Syria.
The Violations Documentation Center in Northern Syria (VDC-NSY) stated that violent clashes erupted between members of the "al-Jabha al-Shamiya" armed group and the "Falcons of the Kurds" Brigade affiliated with the "Hamza Division" in the city of Afrin, after a dispute broke out between the two sides at one of the city's checkpoints, and the dispute escalated to shooting and armed fighting.
The Human Rights Center pointed out that clashes erupted between two groups affiliated with the "Sultan Murad" armed group (the "Hamido Al-Juhaishi" group and the "Abu Mahmoud Safira" group) last Monday, because of the dispute over the right of each group to own stolen electrical devices.
The clashes resulted in casualties from both groups, and the wounded were taken to Turkish hospitals because of their serious injuries, according to the documentation center.
In a report published on the 2nd of August 2018, Amnesty International said that the residents of Afrin “bear multiple violations of human rights, most of them carried out by Syrian armed groups equipped by Turkey."
The organization added: "These violations, which the Turkish armed forces turn a blind eye to, include arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, confiscation of property, and looting."
On Monday, clashes erupted between two groups of the "National Army" in the village of Sukkariya, east of the city of al-Bab in the eastern countryside of Aleppo, and resulted in the injury of two people, causing panic among the residents of the Sukkariya camp as a result of the shooting, according VDC-NSY.
Moreover, last Sunday the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights published that an armed group belonging to the "Sultan Murad" group had assaulted the houses of residents in the city of Afrin with the aim of removing the inhabitants and seizing the houses.
The Syrian Observatory added that the armed group abused women inside the houses, and then the military police intervened and expelled the armed group, where general tension prevailed among the civilians, amid calls by the al-Jabha al-Shamiya group and the military police of the Sultan Murad command to hand over the members who assaulted the houses.