After 50 days of clashes and intensive shelling… the Turkish forces reach the outskirts of Afrin city and tend to impose a full siege on it
The forces of the “Olive Branch” Operation are continuing their attack on Afrin area, as a part of their efforts to reach Afrin area and to impose a full siege over it, where the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored the continuation of the violent fighting between the YPG and the Self-Defense Forces against the rebel and Islamic factions and the Turkish forces, in areas in the north-east and north-west of Afrin city and its east and south-west, amid new advancement by the Turkish forces and the Syrian opposition factions operating with them and their control on 9 new villages, raising to 130, 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 38% of the total villages of Afrin including main five towns (Jendires, Sharra, Raju, Bulbula and Sheikh Hadid).
This accelerated advancement by the Turkish forces and the factions, enabled them to advance and reach the outskirts of Afrin city, where only few hundreds of meters separate the Turkish forces from the north-east of the city, while the Turkish forces are continuing their advancement to meet each others, after their advancement in the east and the south-west of Afrin city, and if they managed to advance and meet each others, then they will impose a full siege over Afrin city and all the villages still controlled by the Kurdish forces, where the Turkish forces tend to resume their intensive aerial, rocket and artillery shelling on the Kurdish forces’ controlled areas causing further destruction, amid increased fears for the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens who are still in Afrin area, although thousands of them have displaced to areas in the towns of Nubl and al-Zahraa, and the rest are prevented by the regime forces to reach Aleppo city, with the exception of paying tributes and huge sums to the checkpoints in order to allow them to cross.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented the death 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, 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, also 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.