In the eastern rural area of the Manbij district, Syrian people are forced to either leave their homes or continue to live in fear due to intense rocket attacks by the YPG, the local offshoot of the PKK terrorist group.
The PKK/YPG, which has occupied more than a third of the country since the overthrow of the Bashar Assad regime, is targeting the lives and safety of the people in Manbij in Aleppo province with rocket and mortar attacks launched from the eastern banks of the Euphrates River.
The people of al-Hafsa, a rural town east of Manbij, are stuck between leaving their homes out of fear of being targeted in the terrorist organization’s rocket attacks and living in fear of death in the lands where they were born and raised.
The town is witnessing a serious wave of migration due to the PKK/YPG attacks, which target civilians and cause severe damage to residential areas. Some 80% of the region’s population has been forced to leave their homes and migrate to other places out of fear of being targeted in the attacks.
Footage from Anadolu Agency (AA) showed the extent of damage to buildings, evacuated streets, abandoned houses and piles of rubble from PKK/YPG attacks.
Town resident Ahmet Sayil explained that the people are living in “great fear.”
The PKK/YPG has been bombing al-Hafsa, especially at night and no one can walk on the streets after sunset, according to Sayil.
“People fled out of fear. They abandoned their agricultural lands, their jobs, their sustenance. People want to escape from here, leaving everything they have behind.”
Sayil said that their only wish is for the bombardment and violence to end.
Another town resident, Hussein Abdullah, said that there is no water in the region, schools are closed and everyone lives in uncertainty.
Noting that living conditions have become unbearable and that the elderly and children cannot sleep at night out of fear, Abdullah said, “Just as we were saying we were saved from (deposed leader) Bashar’s bombardment, the PKK/YPG started striking us.”
The PKK/YPG’s make-shift drones were constantly bombing the water pumps of the treatment plant, which is only 5 kilometers (3.11 miles) from the town, according to Abdullah.
The townspeople are unable to repair the pumps and not allowed to take them to Aleppo to have them repaired either.
Pointing out that the economic conditions in the town had also become difficult, Abdullah said, “The PKK/YPG completely destroyed us.”
The YPG set up a so-called autonomous entity for Syria’s Kurds in the northwest and stands accused of driving out Arab natives in places it occupied. The new administration of Syria, which was behind the ouster of the Baathist regime, recently negotiated the status of the group in a new era, though talks did not achieve much.
The YPG rejects integration into the new army of the country and insists on remaining a separate armed group even if it joins the army.
The YPG’s attacks since the fall of the Assad regime have been particularly deadly in Manbij, which was captured by the Syrian National Army (SNA) from the group. Seven attacks since late December to this day killed 28 civilians and injured 45 others.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), a U.K.-based monitoring group, says the YPG/PKK was behind the killings of at least 65 civilians in the past two months in Aleppo by sniper fire.
Since the fall of the Assad regime, the YPG/PKK has attempted to exploit regional instability to create a “terror corridor” along the border with Türkiye. The SNA’s operations thwarted this attempt, though the situation remains tense near Tishrin Dam. The dam is a strategic area in northern Syria, one of the last strongholds of the YPG/PKK after the SNA gained control of Manbij and Tal Rifaat.
The YPG/PKK has occupied swathes of northeastern Syria since 2015 with the help of the U.S., which calls it a “crucial” ally in the anti-Daesh campaign.
Uncertainty has loomed over the terrorist group’s future in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime and the country’s new rulers promised to gather all armed groups into an official state army to prevent a resurgence of unrest and ensure sovereignty for an inclusive government.
Türkiye, which has backed the Syrian opposition and mounted a string of cross-border offensives into the country between 2016 and 2019, has repeatedly said it was time for the YPG/PKK to disband.
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