While hundreds of families prepare themselves to return to the Eastern Ghouta, a faction of “Olive Branch” expels displaced families of them in Afrin

Tension prevails Afrin city between an Islamic movement and between displaced people from the Eastern Ghouta, where the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights learned from several reliable sources that the Islamic movement of Ahrar al-Sham forced 7 families from displaced people of the Eastern Ghouta to evacuate their homes in Afrin city, where they were evicted from the houses at gunpoint along with warning them not to return to the houses, the sources said that they were threatened that if returned they would be imprisoned on charges of “dealing with Kurdish forces”.

The reliable sources confirmed to the Observatory that this disagreement took place after the refusal of some families to live in the houses of Afrin people who were displaced by the Turkish forces and the Syrian opposition factions, where the families contacted the homeowners to rent the houses from them and sign official contracts, which provoked the Islamic Movement of Ahrar al-Sham in Afrin city and pushed it to expel the residents of the houses who are from the Eastern Ghouta and cane to Afrin on board of the displacement convoys; on the pretext that the area which is under the control of the Islamic Movement of Ahrar al-Sham is “liberated” by the Islamic Movement of Ahrar al-Sham; and it wants to put families of its fighters in these houses.

This expel of Eastern Ghouta families of who were resettled in Afrin; comes after the resentment of the displaced people of the capital Damascus Rif Dimashq from the miserable situation in the areas they had arrived to, of the camps and houses where they had been resettled in, because of what they called a bad treatment by fighters of the factions of “Olive Branch” operation and the lack of food and humanitarian assistance, where the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights obtained reliable information from several intersected sources at the end of the last May 2018, that hundreds of families in the north of Syria are preparing to return from the areas to which they have been displaced; to their towns and cities from which they have been displaced, and in the details documented by the Syrian Observatory: about 400 families from the Eastern Ghouta of who arrived in the past weeks to the Syrian north; are preparing to return to their cities and towns from which the regime forces and Russian forces have displaced them from in the past weeks, and reliable sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory that the return process comes after registering their names by their families at committees in the Eastern Ghouta.

the sources assured the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that these families have changed their decision of staying in the Syrian north, and preferred to return as a result of what they said: “Ignore their tragedy by humanitarian, relief and medical organizations, the lack of proper services, and the ill treatment towards them by local factions operating in the Syrian north, in addition to being persuaded by their families to return to the Eastern because of the latter’s allegations that the situation is safe”.