QAMISHLI : Regime Tries to Capture US Journalist / Pro Assad Demonstration

23-11-2013 – Syrian regime tried to capture a VOA journalist, but the Kurdish police force Asayish intervened. First time I hear about regime trying to capture a foreign journalist in Kurdish areas. There was also a pro-Assad demonstration in Qamishli on 14 November and reports regime is arming tribes.

Jamie Dettmer was recently in Qamishli, about 650 kilometers northeast of Damascus, where he experienced just how dominant the Kurds have become in this corner of Syria. Now, safely back in southeast Turkey, tells about his experience of being the cause of a tense standoff between the Kurdish militia and Syrian military.

JAMIE: What happened is that someone in the street, when the Syrians tried to seize me and I refused to go with the Syrians, ran to about two streets away to where there was an YPG Kurdish police station and alerted them that the Syrians were trying to capture a Western journalist. So they came out armed and there was a standoff between about a dozen or so Kurdish militiamen, and as time went on, as more Syrian reinforcements came, I suppose about 14 or 15 Syrian soldiers – VOA.

Welati.

VOA

yrks2012

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