06 April 2016•Update: 12 April 2016
By Mohamed Misto
HASAKAH, Syria
The PYD has killed at least one local resident -- and detained numerous others -- in the al-Houl district of Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province, according to a local tribal sheikh.
"The group killed one civilian and injured two others while dispersing a protest by residents of al-Houl and surrounding villages to demand that they be allowed to return to their homes," Mohamed Aboud al-Sultan, a leading member of al-Khawatnah tribe (members of which live in Syria and Iraq), told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday.
"The PYD also arrested a number of demonstrators, including tribal elders and notables," he said.
The PYD, the Syrian affiliate of the terrorist PKK organization, captured al-Houl last November from the Daesh terrorist group.
After the PYD captured the area, a number of local residents were forced to move to nearby desert areas, fearing PYD violence of the kind seen last year in rural areas of the Raqqa and Hasakah provinces, according to activists.
"Al-Houl residents were rounded up at gunpoint and told to give up their demand to return to their homes," al-Sultan said in a recorded video.
"The [PYD’s] military commander for the region [Faisal al-Kurdi] threatened to riddle their bodies with bullets if they persisted in their demands," he added.
On March 14, he went on to assert, PYD fighters had torched more than 10 homes in the area and sold some 4,500 dunums of agricultural land owned by local residents (one dunum roughly equals 1,000 square meters).
The tribal sheikh called on the international community and human rights groups to come to the aid of the people of al-Houl and to protect them from abuse by PYD terrorists.
Activists in eastern and northern Syria have documented a number of violations committed earlier by the PYD in areas under its control, including murder, theft and the forced displacement of Arab and Turkmen residents from their villages.
- Ali Abo-Rezeg contributed to this report.
