The Kurdish SDF has reported that one of their fighters was involved in an apparent massacre in the village of Kharous, near the important border city of Kobane. The incident gained major national attention after a video was released online of the killer bragging about the incident.
The fighter in question was posing with the bodies of 21 people he’d killed, and purported that they were all tribal gunmen loyal to the central government. Other reports, however, suggest the killed were detainees that the Kurdish autonomous government had captured and released, and may have included other civilians from the village.
The SDF said this was not in keeping with their “military and ethical values” and that the fighter was immediately dismissed from the organization and referred to a military court for his apparent crimes. They added the incident was “individual and unacceptable.”
An image of the SDF fighter in the massacre video | Image from SOHR
The incident apparently happened on Friday night, amid ongoing reports of a siege against SDF-held Kobane and the surrounding areas. Kurds displaced in the surrounding area have flocked to Kobane, and major displacement camps have been established, raising humanitarian concerns.
The SDF statement on that matter accused the government of violating the ceasefire in its attacks on Kobane and the Jazira region. They also claimed that the ongoing military preparations for more offensives against the SDF showed that the government intends to push toward war rather than a political solution.
The ceasefire that is nominally still in place was a four-day ultimatum by the Sharaa government demanding the SDF accept all their demands for ceding territory and integrating into the military on their terms. That ceasefire expires Saturday at 8:00 pm, though there have been some reports that an extension has been reached to push the matter further down the road.
That the four days of ceasefire didn’t successfully resolve the fighting was no surprise, as both sides have been accusing one another of violation since the the first day, and that ceasefire was only announced after the one two days prior had collapsed outright.
The Kurdish-held city of Kobane, Syria | Image from SOHR
Territory losses have pushed the SDF back into the Hasakeh Governorate and the area around Kobane, and both of those areas are under siege at the moment, with the Syrian government talking about integration in theory, but their military aiming to push gains on the SDF after the US announced they were ending all support for the Kurds.
The reports of a massacre by an SDF fighter, even though the SDF is aiming to hold the killer to account, is likely to only add to the tension between the central government and the Kurds, and provide yet another pretext to try to unify the country by force of arms.
