The Turkish forces become 4 km away from Afrin city and fears for the lives of the citizens in it and its vicinity increase with the continuation of the aerial and ground shelling and the clashes

Death is continuing its search for more bodies to satisfy its hunger, this Turkish death coming from the north to Afrin in the Syrian North, to claim the lives of the Syrians -Kurds, Arabs and Armenians- and turn most of the property of the citizens into ruins, to achieve its desired goals, thus, the victim again is the Syrian citizens whose sin is their insistence not to leave their houses, to come this death and claim the lives of 204 Syrian citizens of the Kurds, Arabs and Armenians, including 32 children and 26 women, who were killed in the Turkish aerial, rocket and artillery shelling, and executions carried out against citizens in Afrin area, since the 20th of January 2018, and the shelling resulted in resulted in the injury of hundreds of citizens with varying severity, and the missing of others, while some of injured cases have permanent disabilities.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored the continuation of the Turkish airstrikes targeting areas in Afrin countryside, where the raids targeted areas in the townships of Sharra, Bulbula and Jandairis in the north-eastern, northern and south-western countryside of Afrin, in conjunction with the violent clashes between the YPG and the Self-Defense Forces against the rebel and Islamic factions and the Turkish forces, in areas in the north-east of Afrin city and in its north, and other areas in the countryside of Jendires in the south-west of Afrin, where the SOHR monitored that the Turkish forces approached from the north-eastern side and became at a distance of less than 4 km away from Afrin city, while they reached a distance of less than 6 km from the north of Afrin city, which includes with a number of villages in its vicinity, hundreds of thousands of the residents of Afrin area and those displaces to it, while fears for the lives of these citizens increase, with approaching the clashes and the attacking forces to Afrin city, amid tragic humanitarian conditions that the citizens suffer, those citizens who do not almost leave the shelters and cellars for fear of the bombardment that does not almost calm down on Afrin.

The Turkish forces managed through their attack today, to advance into 3 new villages raising to 121, the number of villages and towns controlled by the factions and the Turkish forces since the start of the Operation “Olive Branch” on the 20th of January 2018, thus, they became in control of about 35% of the total villages of Afrin including main five towns (Jandairis, Sharra, Raju, Bulbula and Sheikh Hadid), while it rose to 414 including 71 soldiers of the Turkish forces, the number of the members and fighters of the Turkish forces and the factions who were killed in the clashes against the Kurdish Units in Afrin area, while it rose to 376, the number of fighters of the YPG and the Self-Defense forces who were killed in the shelling and clashes in Afrin countryside, since the start of Operation “Olive Branch”, while 81 members at least of regime forces’ NDF were killed in the Turkish shelling since they started to enter on the 20th of February 2018, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights received information from several reliable sources that the humanitarian situation is getting catastrophic in Afrin area, as a result of increased shelling and escalation of ground attack and the accompanied shelling, where reliable sources confirmed for the Observatory that thousands of civilians are now sleeping on the open in Afrin city and the surrounding villages and farms nearby, in addition to the displacement of more than 12 thousand civilians from the area towards the towns of Nubl and al-Zahraa in the northern countryside of Aleppo.