Nearly 10,000 Syrians had moved to Syria’s northern city of Jarabulus from the village of Shiukh east of the Euphrates River, as the PYD had been holding the village under the pretext of the fight against the Daesh terrorist organization. After the area was rid of Daesh terrorists, Syrian civilians organized through a social media platform to return to their village.
Almost 100 residents of Shiukh, including women and children, moved toward the Shiukh Bridge, previously destroyed by the PYD, said the source, who asked not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media. But the PYD terrorists opened fire on the villagers holding Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Turkish flags, killing seven civilians and injuring three others, said the source.
The injured civilians were rushed to hospitals in Jarabulus. While the PKK is recognized as terrorist group by Turkey, the EU, and the U.S., the PYD -- its Syrian offshoot -- is not. The U.S., in particular, has praised the PYD’s armed wing, the YPG, as a “reliable partner” in Syria.
The PKK resumed its decades-old armed campaign in July 2015. Over 1,100 people, including over 800 security personnel and over 300 civilians, have lost their lives in PKK attacks since then. More than 4,000 security personnel and over 2,000 civilians have also been injured. Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of the Arab Spring uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN. The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, put the death toll from the six-year conflict at more than 470,000 people.