The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

The regime authorities fail to stop the house-thieves and the checkpoints that impose fees, resentment prevails Aleppo city again and their controlled areas in the countryside

Aleppo city and the regime held areas in its countryside witness popular resentment of the checkpoints of the militiamen loyal to the regime, which the people described the checkpoint as “looting”, and local sources asserted to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that the checkpoints impose money on all kinds of goods that pass through the checkpoints at the outskirts of Aleppo city, and the civilians passing through the checkpoints, and the civilians asserted that the royalty imposed on the civilians who carry medicines and baby’s foods and luggage, and these checkpoints imposed different amounts of money since months.

These demonstration and protests of the citizens, comes in conjunction with the looting and continued theft of the militiamen loyal to the regime since the regime forces began their military operation in the eastern countryside of Aleppo on the 17th of January 2017, in order to end the presence of the “Islamic State” organization in the areas remained under its control in the eastern and southeastern countryside of Aleppo on the 30th of June 2017, where the sources asserted to the Observatory that successive thefts carried out by groups of gunmen loyal to the regime on homes, shops and other properties of citizens, in the towns and villages controlled by the regime forces in Aleppo city and its countryside, and their looting of the furniture of citizens even became worse when a group of gunmen loyal to the regime tried to steal water pumps in al-Khafsah water station to sell them, where another group of the regime forces arrested them and took them to an unknown destination.

Aleppo province also witness looting of furniture which is still continued even 200 days after the regime forces managed to control Aleppo city except for areas remain under the control of the factions in the western parts of the city, al-Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, and in the north of the city of Aleppo which is controlled by Syria Democratic Forces and Kurdish People’s Protection Units, where residents have complained to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, saying that after they were forced to leave their homes in the areas of military operations in Minyan and Project of 1070 apartments and the project of 3 thousand apartments and al-Hamdaniya and the outskirts of New Aleppo, they began to return to their homes, most of them found checkpoints of militiamen loyal to the regime set up on the entrances of the neighborhood where their homes exist, and the militiamen prevented them from entering their neighborhoods, while some of them were able to reach their homes after paying bribes to the gunmen loyal to the regime, finding their houses not like how they left them. The members of the regime forces and their allied militiamen denied the looting of furniture carried out by groups of the regime’s allied gunmen, who are thieves, and paid big bribes to leaders and then imposed royalties on passers-by in their areas of influence, to get double of what they have paid, and they stole everything in houses, including electrical tools, money, jewelries, bathroom and kitchen equipment, and electric wires in the walls of the houses and some asserted to the Syrian Observatory that they have seen the looting with their own eyes, and the power was given to those thieves and furniture looters which gave them the ability to steal houses while their owners are inside the houses.

Despite the claim of the regime authorities to hunt the gunmen thieves loyal to the regime, the people of Aleppo confirmed to the Observatory that the looting increases day after another and that the resentment began to increase, because lootings are still going day after day, and at a greater pace, and no one wants to get out of these areas without getting wealth, and the regime’s security forces do not want to declare their failure, but they procrastinate until everything is done on its own, and until the theft stops. The residents confirmed earlier that they were being robbed in daylight, where people and gunmen loyal to the regime, after the fall of shells on areas in western Aleppo, they hospitalize the injured people and return to the injured and the killed people’s houses to steal them. One of them assert than the regime’s intelligence which arrested tens of thousands of young people and put them in their prisons and detention centers, is unable to stop groups that no one knows who supports them, leaving them to steal and do what they did to the citizens who spend their lifetime in order to be able to own a shop or a house, which is being looted daily by the gunmen loyal to the regime.