Turkish-Backed Militants Set Fire to Farms in Syria

Date: 25 May 2020 - 21:45

News ID: ۷۸۸۹۰

DAMASCUS (Press TV) – Turkish-backed militants have burned wide areas of agricultural lands in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah, reports say.
Syria’s official news agency SANA, citing local sources, reported that the acts of arson took place in several villages of Tal Tamer and Abu-Rasin regions of the Kurdish-populated province when a group of militants attacked the areas.
Local residents and witnesses said that "fires spread quickly due to the winds and burned more than 20,000 dunums (20,000,000 square meters) of wheat and barley fields which are still burning till now and spreading to burn more farms”.
The attack comes less than a week after many farms in the same region were brunt due to a series of mortar attacks by the Turkish-backed mercenaries.
On May 17, an American aircraft reportedly dropped thermal balloons over agricultural lands and farms in Hasakah, setting fire to wheat crops in the area. The targeted area was part of agricultural lands in the countryside of the town of al-Shaddadi.
Meanwhile, infighting between rival groups in Syria’s northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib has ended in the killing and injuring of several Turkish-backed militants.
Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Syria’s official news agency SANA that fierce clashes broke out between militants affiliated to the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terrorist group, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front, and terrorists controlling several neighborhoods in Ariha town, located south of Idlib, upon a conflict over influence and sharing properties left by their owners, who fled the area after the Turkish incursion in October.
The Jabhat Fateh al-Sham outfit later dispatched a convoy of terrorists, armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), to the region, exacerbating the gunfight, which is reportedly still in progress.
The Ankara-backed militants were deployed to northeastern Syria last October after Turkish military forces launched a long-threatened cross-border invasion in a declared attempt to push militants of the so-called Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) away from border areas.
Ankara views the U.S.-backed YPG as a terrorist organization tied to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region in Turkey since 1984.