ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) legal team has responded to a report by human rights monitor Amnesty International in which Kurdish forces in the SDF were accused of targeting civilians in clashes with Turkey and its Free Syrian Army (FSA) proxies. The US-backed SDF, which includes the People’s Protection Units (YPG), dismissed Amnesty’s witness statements and questioned the monitor’s impartiality. “The Turkish military, and to a lesser extent Kurdish forces, are carrying out indiscriminate attacks in the embattled Syrian towns of Afrin and Azaz respectively in northern Aleppo, killing scores of civilians, according to eyewitness testimonies obtained and verified by Amnesty International,” read an Amnesty report published on February 28. The monitor says it used its ‘Digital Verification Corps’ to validate claims made by eye witnesses. “The fighting in Afrin between Turkish and US-backed Kurdish forces has already caused numerous civilian deaths and is putting the lives of hundreds more at risk,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Middle East research director. “Reports of shelling of villages and residential areas in cities are deeply troubling. The use of artillery and other imprecise explosive weapons in civilian areas is prohibited by international humanitarian law and all parties should cease such attacks immediately.” The report featured interviews with witnesses of incidents in both Afrin and Azaz. It refers to an attack on a hospital in Azaz on January 18 by Kurdish forces. Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch only began on January 20. “We in the SDF confirm that what was written in the report is untrue and we have not and will never target civilians. Amnesty International’s report is based on the testimony of a media activist who speculates that the source of the rockets was from Afrin, and he uses the language of generalization and presumption, which is unacceptable as evidence at all,” reads an official statement by the SDF’s legal team published on the SDF’s website on March 3. The SDF had insisted in multiple statements it does not target civilians. It argued that organizations like Amnesty are supposed to be neutral and non-political, and considers it “unfair” that the aggressor and the victim are judged by the same standard. “It is easy for a large military force such as the Turkish force, which kills dozens of civilians in Afrin every day, to kill four people in Azaz, Kalis or Rihaniyah, and accuse our units, in order to disrupt world public opinion,” SDF said. Operation Olive Branch, launched by Turkey with the stated aim of clearing the Turkish border of “terrorists,” started on January 20. The Turkish army and its proxies now control 25 percent of the canton of Afrin, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Some 320 Olive Branch forces, including 50 Turkish soldiers, have been killed, while 295 YPG fighters have lost their lives, according to SOHR. The monitor claims 149 civilians have died.
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