Kanaker under siege | Concerns grow for the lives of hundreds of residents over looming regime security campaign

Rif Dimashq Province – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: Regime forces are still imposing tight security siege over Kanaker town in western Ghouta, amid public protests throughout Syrian provinces, demanding the lifting of this siege.

 

Demonstrations and vigils are staged daily in various Syrian provinces, expressing solidarity with the people of Kanaker, amid growing fears that the regime authorities may prove their threats of unleashing a large-scale security campaign and arrest hundreds of the town’s people.

 

Yesterday, reliable sources informed SOHR that regime forces, backed by tanks and heavy weapons, cordoned off the town of Kanaker in eastern Ghouta in Rif Dimashq, along with running daily military patrols, which paralysed civilians’ movement in the town.

 

Regime forces also threatened, through the town’s elders and dignitaries, to storm all houses in the town unless nearly 150 suspicious people were handed over. These people were wanted for “taking arms against the state”, as regime forces say, in addition to others for “participating in demonstrations and setting fire to a poster of the Syrian regime’s president” a few days earlier.

 

These security procedures coincided with preventing civilians from traveling between Kanaker town and Damascus. However, government employees and school and university students were exempted.

 

A few days earlier, the town of Kanaker experienced several protests, as residents blocked the town’s roads by rubber tires and set fire to a poster of the head of the Syrian regime “Bashar al-Assad”, after regime forces arrested three women from the town for unknown reasons.

 

On September 22, reliable SOHR sources confirmed that unknown gunmen opened fire on the head of the “military security detachment” in Al-Quneitra city, who is from Banyas city, while he was traveling on Al-Salam highway near Kanaker town in western Ghouta, Rif Dimashq.

 

According to SOHR sources, the attack resulted in the death of one of the regime security official’s escorts, while the official himself sustained moderate injuries.

 

On the other hand, tension was growing in Kanaker town in the wake of arresting three women from the town in the previous day by the regime’s security services for unknown reasons.

 

A day earlier, Observatory eyewitnesses monitored several young men taking down a huge picture of the head of the Syrian regime “Bashar al-Assad”, setting it on fire in Kanaker town, following the arrest of three women from the town for unknown reasons. According to SOHR sources, the town was witnessing rising tension and deployment of local gunmen from the town on the main roads.