(Zaman Al Wasl)- A group of Al-Hamza Division, key unit in the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, has tortured a telecommunication engineer refused to unlock smart phones 'confiscated' from the residents of Ras al-Ayn town, source told Zaman al-Wasl.
The owner of mobiles store said he was subjected to torture, severe beatings, and by Hamza Division fighters for three days after he refused to unlock stolen smartphones.
People of the border town went back to using old mobile phones for communication, after smartphones were confiscated and their owners tortured, under the pretext of having pictures of relatives recruited by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units.
Turkey and the National Syrian Army launched a cross-border military offensive into neighboring Syria on Oct. 9 with the aim of pushing the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an amalgam of Kurdish-led militias, away from its border.
The operation that grabbed a 120-kilometre-long (70-mile) swathe of Syrian land along the frontier, has left hundreds dead and caused 300,000 people to flee their homes mostly from Ras al-Ayn.
The SNA fighters have been blamed for a growing ledger of abuses against the local population, residents say, undermining Turkey’s stated goal of creating a “safe zone” for civilians, according to the Washington Post.
The Syrian National Army is an umbrella group in northern Syria consisting of an assortment of rebel forces. Many of the group’s factions, made up largely of Syrian Arab fighters, had already fought at Turkey’s behest in two previous military operations over the past three years,
Eight years of war in Syria have killed 560,000 people and driven half the pre-war population of 22 million from their homes, including more than 6 million as refugees to neighbouring countries.
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