MESOP: REVENCHE FOLLOWS REVENCHE – After breaking Aleppo siege, Syrian rebels threaten to attack Kurds

August 10, 2016 – Ara News – ALEPPO – Major Yasser Abd al-Rahim, Commander of the rebel group of Fatah Halab Operations Chamber in Aleppo, said on Tuesday that they will attack the Kurds in Aleppo, after the mainly Islamist rebels broke the siege of the Syrian regime on Aleppo city. On the other hand, Kurdish officials told ARA News they expect a long war to take place in Syria.The rebel commander accused the Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of helping the regime, and said that their forces will not leave the al-Castello road under control of either the Kurds or the regime.

Earlier, Syrian regime troops managed to cut off the main supply road for opposition rebels –known as Castello road– and imposed a full siege over the city of Aleppo, however Syrian rebels eventually were be able to break the siege after getting reinforcements from other regions like Idlib.

Abd al-Rahim said that the Syrian opposition militias will take ‘revenge’ for the Syrian rebels that were killed by YPG, after they attacked YPG positions, vowing that Kurds “will not find a place to bury their dead in Aleppo”.

In the meantime, YPG official Siamand Rojava rejected the accusations, suggesting that the ‘radical groups’ of the opposition continue to attack and kill unarmed civilians in the Kurdish neighbourhood of Sheikh Maqsoud by artillery shelling.

“Our forces are trying to keep Kurdish areas safe, we’ve never tried to involve ourselves in the fighting between opposition groups and regime troops,” the YPG official told ARA News.

Kurdish officials see in the changing situation in Aleppo a sign that the war will be ongoing. “Aleppo is very strategic for the regime and the opposition,” said dr. Nasir Haji Mansour, an official in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). He stressed that neither the regime nor the opposition can control all of Aleppo.

“We have two armies: the regime forces on the one hand, and FSA, Nusra, Ahrar as-Sham and Jund as-Sham on the other hand, and the victims are civilians. Violence will not bring a solution,” Mansour told ARA News.

“It is clear that the Syrian war will continue. The only one who can change the situation are the major powers, the United States and Russia; however they cannot agree on Syria,” he said.

“For the Kurds, we don’t believe in radical groups such as Nusra, and we don’t believe in the regime. The regime continues to believe in a military solution. So, these forces are not good for us as Kurds,” he added.

Speaking to ARA News, Kurdish analyst and former official in the Kobane administration Idris Nassan said that the fighting will continue “until there is a Russian-American agreement”.

He suggested that the Western powers have been outraged over the siege imposed by Russia and the Assad regime on Eastern Aleppo, while there was supposed to be a cessation of hostilities.

“Russia may ask for a cessation of hostilities again, because it was clear that the regional and international countries were not informed when Russia and the regime imposed a siege on eastern Aleppo, trapping thousands of civilians,” Nassan said. “But they won’t let the armed groups to fully control Aleppo.”

Reporting by: Jan Mohammed  www.mesop.de