How did the corpses of the victims evolve into a treasure for the militants in Afrin’s Jinderis town?

Target Platform – Ahmad Qatma

Stories and narratives on the events of the devastating earthquake that occurred at dawn on February 6, in Southern Turkey and Northwestern Syria, including in the center of the Jinderis district, situated in the countryside of Afrin, continue to circulate.
Following the shocking testimonies on the one hand, the video clips and the recorded voices on the other hand, which in general demonstrated the racial discrimination faced by the Kurdish victims from the region’s inherent population during the removal of the debris, the burial of the victims or the distribution of aid martial, these testimonies continue to more post-earthquake facts, which conceals more tragedies and heartbreaking stories on how the armed factions of the Turkish-backed „Syrian National Army“ (SNA) treats the earthquake victims, both the deceased and the survivors.

Exploiting the different compositions of Jinderis

Following Turkey’s implementation of the “Olive Branch” operation in 2018 in the Kurdish region of Afrin, which resulted in the displacement of most of the inherent population, in exchange for settling hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians from the countryside of Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, and other areas, the demographics of Jinderis became like the rest of the regions of Afrin, namely, very strange. In addition, many people are ignorant of the backgrounds of the residents living in their vicinity, which facilitated the adoption of armed factions for families who lost their lives under the rubble, for material gain.

In this regard, “Suzdar”, a resident of the city of Jinderis, said in his testimony to the “Target Platform”: “The population composition of Jinderis is formed from the neighboring villages, and in some cases, the families of the afflicted in Jinderis were not able to reach them until the morning of the day of the earthquake, as a result of the interrupting news, internet, and communication means.

This is a case that facilitated the claims of the Syrian opposition militants of the afflicted families belonging to them, as “Suzdar” recounts: “Imagine that armed men from the factions, knowing that from the house of the collapsed houses, its inhabitants were Kurds, were extricating the victims from under the rubble and the jewelry and gold was still on the bodies of the female victims.

He further added: “One of the armed men would claim that this family is his and that this house is his, and then he would take the bodies of the victims in his car and drive them to Afrin, but on the way, the female victims were being stripped of all their gold and jewelry, such as fences, earrings, and necklaces. Then the gunman delivered the bodies of the victims to a hospital in Afrin, claiming that he pulled them out from under the rubble.“

These are no single cases

Regarding the number of cases similar to this case that “Suzdar” explained, it cannot be said that this was a single case, as it was not confined to solely one case or two, three, or four,” he then continued: “In one of the cases, the gunman placed the bodies in front of the Civil Police headquarters in Afrin, while their relatives had arrived after exhuming and taking the bodies. As the families of the victims went to look for them, they realized that the bodies had already been taken out, so they went to search for them in the neighboring areas, while practically the gunmen had pulled their relatives out from under the rubble, and stripped them of jewelry and gold and threw them in front of the Civil Police headquarters“.
According to the witness: “The bodies of the victims were taken to hospitals, the civil police, or mass graves, without specifying the identity of the victims and the places where they were retrieved. Accordingly, the Civil Defense ensured a mass burial of the bodies of the unidentified victims, which resulted in the mixing of the bodies with each other (inherent residents and citizens outside the area), including a young man from the Sheikh Al-Hadid area, who was buried in a mass grave.
The witness regrets that not all the victims were documented with photographs before their burial in the mass graves, especially on the first day of the earthquake, as everyone who was buried at this time in mass graves was of unknown identity in general due to the heavy rain and the weather being very cold, and therefore no filming took place of the victims or documentation of the locations of their recovery, which is information that may help their families find them in the future.

Similar cases in Afrin

It does not seem that the matter was confined to the center of the city of Jinderis, which was affected by the greatest damage from the earthquake even in the center of the city of Afrin, which was damaged less, and witnessed the collapse of a limited number of buildings, similar incidents occurred.
Target inquired from civilian sources about the occurrence of similar incidents, and it seems that they have already occurred. Abu Walat, a Kurdish civilian from the city’s inherent residents, said in an exclusive interview with the Target platform: “In a building called the Darouzi building, located in the ancient part of Afrin near the house of the Naous family, one of its residents was the Kurdish citizen Jihad Karad, the accountant at Cihan

Hospital, who died in the earthquake with his son, as an incident similar to the events in Jinderis occurred.
He continued: “After the building collapsed due to the earthquake, the residents pulled the victims out from under the rubble. The first person to remove the body of a woman was the wife of a member of the Darouzi family, and she was wearing jewelry in her hand. One of the gunmen took her under the pretext of taking her to the hospital, but the body disappeared.”

The surprise was in the site where the woman was buried after her jewelry was stolen, as “Abu Walat” mentioned: “After searching for her by her relatives in the rubble, they could not find her, and only discovered that the woman’s body was not there. After publishing the woman’s photos in WhatsApp groups to identify her, it was found that she was buried in the city of Qibtan al-Jabal, northwest of Aleppo, where her family went and brought her body, but without jewels.