Violations | HTS seizes 130 civilian houses in Ma’arat Ikhwan, and expels displaced family from one of the houses

SOHR sources say that members of Hayaat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) expelled a displaced family from Abu al-Dhhur countryside, from a house which had been inhabited months ago by a displaced person in the village of Ma’arat al-Ikhwan in Idlib countryside, and then HTS has put a family in the house of one of its fighters.

According to Syrian Observatory sources, HTS has marked with numbers the property it seized, estimated by 130 houses in the village, owned by the Druze community, migrated to the Syrian regime-controlled areas and to neighbouring countries and Europe, coinciding with the outbreak of the Syrian revolution.

On August 18, reliable sources informed the Syrian Observatory that members of the security forces of HTS have brought in excavators, metal detectors and devices used to detect underground voids, in order to conduct excavations and to search for antiquities in the archaeological “Tal Ghannam” in the northern countryside of Jisr al-Shughour.

According to local sources, the landowner and his relatives refused the excavations and expelled HTS members the first time, but then “Tahrir al-Sham” brought in reinforcement and heavily armed soldiers before the women expelled them from the archaeological hill.

Meanwhile, the security office in the town of Zarzour summoned the landowner and forced him under threat to strike a deal with them to complete the search for antiquities on his land, in exchange for a percentage of the antiquities.

The security office has justified the fact that treasures and antiquities in its areas of control are the right of the mujahedeen, and the owners of the land have no right to object to their actions under any circumstances.