There are conflicting reports on the number of injuries. The UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported eight people were injured in the confrontation, but local sources speaking to Rudaw raised the toll to 15.
The sources told Rudaw on condition of anonymity that the Sulaiman Shah Brigade, a Turkish-backed militia group has demanded residents of the village to sign documents stating that their lands belong to the Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria (Rojava), providing the militia with justification to take over the land.
The resident of the village told Rudaw in a phone call that the group is asking for $10 tax on each olive tree on their lands.
The Sulaiman Shah Brigade issued a joint statement with the Hamza Division, another pro-Turkey group operating in Afrin, claiming that they have dispatched forces due to a conflict arising between an Arab and a Kurdish family in the village. Local sources refute this claim.
Mustafa Shekho, a human rights activist, told Rudaw that the group has detained two men, Idris Haji Ali Ebo and Hasan Rashid Iso, in the village school and transferred them to the group’s military bases.
Laman Khalil, another civil society member in Afrin, told Rudaw during a televised interview that the group had asked the detainees to say that the conflict was due to a fight between two neighboring families, which had escalated into violence.
Afrin is a Kurdish city that was taken over by Turkey and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels in a military operation against Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in January 2018. Most of the Kurdish population fled and Turkish authorities resettled Arabs displaced from elsewhere in Syria into their vacated homes.
In August 2023, the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on the Sulaiman Shah Brigade for alleged human rights violations committed against residents in Afrin.
Washington has accused the group of targeting the Kurdish residents of Afrin, saying that many of them “are subjected to harassment, abduction, and other abuses until they are forced to abandon their homes or pay large ransoms for return of their property or family members.”
Updated at 12:49 pm
