UN: About 100,000 people displaced in Afrin, urgently need aid
People sit atop a trailer with their belongings fleeing a Turkish offensive
in Syria’s Afrin region, March 15, 2018. (Photo: Reuters)
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – The United Nations on Monday called for urgent help to address the catastrophic situation tens of thousands of people from the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin are facing.
“Nearly 100,000 people have been displaced by hostilities in Afrin District,” Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the UN Secretary-General said during a daily press briefing.
After almost two months of a military incursion into Afrin, Turkish forces and its allied Syrian rebels, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), captured the center of the Kurdish city on Sunday.
The advance of the forces pushed tens of thousands of people to flee from the region, according to the UN.
People sit in a truck with their belongings, northeast of Afrin, on Thursday. (Photo: Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)
“The majority, some 75,000 people, have fled to Tal Refaat and the remainder went to Nubul, Zahraa, and surrounding villages,” Dujarric said.
“The massive influx of internally displaced people is putting a strain on host communities, which are already overwhelmed. All 16 schools in Tal Refaat are being used as internally displaced shelters, resulting in the interruption of education.”
On Jan. 20, Turkey launched ‘Operation Olive Branch,’ intended to drive out the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), its all-female brigade, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), and the ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) from Afrin.
Ankara views the PYD, and its military wing, the YPG, and the YPJ, as a ‘terrorist’ group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group fighting a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish government in Turkey.
Following the capture of Afrin, the Syrian rebels were spotted looting stores and houses in the area.
Rebels looting shops in Afrin. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
The Turkish allied fighters pillaged private properties, and political and military sites, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Some residents told SOHR that their houses were completely stripped of their belongings.
A fighter rides in the back of a pickup truck with looted livestock. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)