YPG leader killed by Arab defectors, north Syria

25-04-2014 – ARA News – Nusaybin, Turkey– On Wednesday afternoon, three armed Arab men from the village of Zahir al-Arab in the countryside of Sere Kaniye/Ras al-Ayn city killed a leader of the Kurdish forces of the Popular Protection Units (YPG) while visiting him in a YPG headquarter in Sere Kaniye city, in northeast Syria.

Notably, the village of Zahir al-Arab is inhabited by Arabs who have been settled in northeastern Syria on the border line with Turkey in 1970s by the Syrian Baath regime and who have been brought from Raqqa province.

A source close to the YPG forces told ARA News that the men who killed the YPG leader were former Arab members of the YPG. “They stabbed him from the back while he was preparing tea for them,” the source said. The source also pointed out: “After the incident, the YPG forces −affiliated with th Democratic Union Party (PYD)− blocked the road between Sere Kaniye and Darbasiyah cities, and prevented the movement of people from and to the city of Sere Kaniye, while YPG fighters surrounded the village of Zahir al-Arab.”

Speaking to ARA News, activist Raman Yusif said: “The reason behind the killing of the YPG leader is the opposition of the residents of the Zahir al-Arab village to the control of the YPG fighters over the wheat storage in their village.”

“The YPG forces hadn’t respected an agreement between them and the pro-regime Arab militia of the National Defence, which was reached with the supervision of Syrian regime officials on the 12th of this April. According to the agreement, the YPG forces had to deliver the Arab villages to local Arab armed groups,” Yusif said.

Notably, armed Arab men from the countryside of Sere Kaniye joined the ranks of the YPG forces on the 9thof November 2013 “after they announced leaving the ranks of the Baath Party”, according to media outlets close to the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the YPG forces.   Reporting by: Zara Seyda