FRI 29 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Jan 20, 2015
Source: The Daily Star
Kurds: Regime used cluster bombs
BEIRUT: The Kurdish YPG militia Monday accused Syrian regime forces of using internationally banned cluster munitions in this weekend’s fighting between the two sides in the city of Hassakeh, as a tenuous, informal truce took hold.

At least 18 people were killed in the Saturday-Sunday clashes, which continued into the early hours of the night, according to the YPG. “The regime forces last night [Sunday] used cluster bombs, which are internationally banned weapons of warfare, against our units.”

The militia claimed “dozens” of regime fatalities in four areas in and around the city where the clashes took place, while acknowledging the deaths of five militia members and two civilians. The clashes erupted after YPG members detained around 10 pro-regime paramilitaries when they tried to seize part of the city that was supposed to remain neutral, local sources said.

Last year, the two sides agreed to split the city into regime-held, YPG-held and neutral areas.

Syrian state media has remained silent about the clashes. The Kurdish party the PYD and its affiliated militia, the YPG, have been regularly accused of colluding with the regime of President Bashar Assad, while the party’s supporters say it should be considered an opposition group.

An anti-YPG Kurdish activist group circulated video footage purporting to show a female Kurdish fighter from Hassakeh accusing regime forces of “betrayal” by violating the deal, which required a firm military response. The activist group said that scattered fighting took place Monday, while Kurdish forces managed to capture a regime colonel.

Further west, an official and a anti-regime group said Kurdish fighters have captured a hill overlooking the Syrian town of Ain al-Arab after intense clashes with ISIS militants.

Idriss Nassan, a Kurdish official based in the border town, says the hill of Mashta Nour was captured early in the day, adding that there were casualties on both sides.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said members of the YPG raised their flag on the hill southeast of the town.

The Observatory and Nassan said that with the capture of Mashta Nour, YPG fighters now overlook supply lines that ISIS uses to bring in weapons and fighters. YPG fighters have been advancing in Ain al-Arab, known widely by its Kurdish name Kobani, for a number of weeks with the help of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and Iraqi peshmerga fighters.

Elsewhere, a regime bombardment killed six people, including a father and his son, in the Damascus suburb of Arbin, the Observatory said.

The pro-opposition Coordination Committee for the town posted what it said was a letter that residents found on the doors of mosques in the early morning, urging them to gather at 11 a.m. “to support the opening of a humanitarian corridor” with other areas of the Ghouta suburbs. The move was a trap, the group claimed, as people who gathered were targeted by deadly mortar fire, which killed five and wounded 35.

In Damascus, a young boy was killed and two others wounded when a mortar bomb strike hit the Faihaa athletic center, the Observatory said.



 
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