Ali Iso, the directory of Ezdina, a Germany-based Yazidi rights organization told Rudaw that 'Syrian opposition militants' opened fire at Ahmed Haso, an elderly Yazidi man, and his wife while returning to their village of Qaybar in the countryside of Afrin.
Haso’s wife was injured and transferred to a hospital in Afrin for treatment, Iso said.
A coalition of Syrian rebel groups spearheaded by the jihadist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) launched a major offensive against the Syrian army over the past week. They took control of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in the country, and advanced their offensive into Hama province.
Besides the clashes between the rebels and the Syrian regime in Aleppo, the SNA, which is backed by Turkey and effectively controls the Kurdish city of Afrin, launched an offensive against Kurdish forces that held their positions in several towns such as Tel Rifaat and the Shahba area in northern Aleppo.
Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Kurds, fled their hometown of Afrin in 2018 due to a military operation by Turkey and its Syrian proxies, and have since been residing in Shahba and other Kurdish-held areas.
In a separate incident, another Yazidi man named Mamdouh Bakir Othman was killed by “extremist factions,” in Aleppo, Ezdina reported on Facebook.
According to Ezdina, Othman was killed on Friday in Aleppo, and his family received his body on Monday.
The motive behind Othman’s death is believed to be “ethnic and religious,” according to Iso.
During a televised interview with Rudaw on Sunday, Iso warned that “large-scale retaliations” might be carried out against the Kurdish population in Aleppo. Approximately half a million Kurds and 5,000 Yazidis lived in the province before the start of the violence.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Monday that it is working with 'relevant parties' to safely evacuate residents of the strategic town of Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province to northeast Syria (Rojava) amid intensified attacks on Aleppo.
On Sunday, the HTS-led opposition government in Idlib called on the SDF to withdraw from Aleppo towards northeast Syria, promising to take care of civilians in the Kurdish-held neighborhoods.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, placed the death toll in five days of fighting at 514, including 217 and 51 militants from HTS and SNA respectively, 154 Syrian army soldiers, and 92 civilians.