Population in Syria’s Sere Kaniye protest against insecurity

QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – On Sunday, calls to protest spread for the third day in a row in the city of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) in the northwestern countryside of Hasakah Governorate, northeast Syria.

For the third day in a row, Sere Kaniye has been witnessing a general strike including the closure of the shops.

The strike came in tandem with ceremonies of mourning Muhammad Barhawi, a goldsmith in the city, who was shot dead on June 30 by two unknown attackers in front of his house in the city center.

Residents of Sere Kaniye suffer from increasing stealing cases and fighting among Turkish-backed armed opposition factions over prosperities of the original inhabitants, according to human rights organizations.

Many protests have been staged in Sere Kaniye, rejecting insecurity in the city.  

On Saturday, Civil Police, affiliated with Turkish-backed armed opposition factions, also known as Syrian National Army (SNA), arrested Khaled al-Deif, a shop owner in the city, during the protests, on charges of chanting slogans against them.

Hours later, gunmen of the aforementioned factions shot a child selling ice cream because he refused to give them ice cream for free.

In October 2019, Turkish forces, with the support of the SNA factions, launched the military operation “Peace Spring” against Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad under the pretext of pushing the fighters of the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) away from the Turkish border with Syria.

As a result, they seized many areas in the abovementioned areas and displaced approximately 300,000 civilians, human rights reports said.

The Turkish-occupied areas in north and northeastern Syria continue to witness a state of security chaos and instability amid the SNA factions’ inability to maintain the situation.

Some videos were circulated on Social media for protestors, chanting, and “Peace Spring is unsafe” to denote the reality in which they live. 

Reporting by Dilsoz Youssef