At least 60 die in Afrin in clashes between former al-Qaeda jihadis and pro-Turkish rebels

For about ten days, rival anti-Assad factions have been facing each other. The death toll includes 28 HTS fighters and 20 among pro-Turkish rebels and a dozen civilians. The Turkish army did not intervene, leaving the field open to the two warring sides.

Aleppo (AsiaNews) – At least 60 people have died in clashes over the past 10 days between the main jihadi organisation in northern Syria and Turkish-backed anti-Assad rebels.

Described by local sources as the bloodiest in recent years, the fighting allowed the Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (HTS) group, a former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, to gain ground in areas under Turkish influence, near the border with Turkey.

According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which has a large network of informants on the ground, 28 HTS fighters and 20 others from pro-Turkish rebels were killed, as were a dozen civilians.

The violence broke out on 8 October and the Turkish army, although deployed in the region, did not intervene, leaving room to the two factions.

In a few days jihadis seized Afrin, near the border, but now they face a counter-offensive and the  protests by the local population who are not keen on jihadi control.

The belligerents had reached an agreement allowing the HTS to run Afrin, whose security they were supposed to guarantee by deploying checkpoints around the city and in the area that separates it from the territories held by the Syrian government and the Kurds.

The pact should have been extended to other areas near the border, but after a brief truce, fighting resumed yesterday evening near Azaz, a stronghold of the pro-Turkish Jabhat al-Shamiyah group.

According to SOHR director Rami Abdel Rahman, the HTS would never have entered the region "without the prior green light" of Ankara.

Turkey, which has opposed Bashar al-Assad's regime since the early stages of the war, began deploying troops across the border in northern Syria in 2020, to create a buffer zone under its control.

Ankara recently began to reach out to the Syrian regime and Assad himself in an attempt to achieve peace, which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could use in next year’s election.

Meanwhile, since the start of the HTS offensive, hundreds of people have demonstrated in several cities against the jihadi group, which today controls about half of Idlib province, the last rebel stronghold in the country after a decade-long conflict that has caused almost half a million deaths.

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