ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Two journalists were killed in an airstrike in northeast Syria (Rojava) on Thursday while covering the conflict between Kurdish forces and the Syrian National Army (SNA), their employer said on Friday.
Cihan Belkin and Nazim Dashtan worked for Hawar News Agency (ANHA), which is affiliated with the Kurdish administration in Rojava. Their driver Aziz Budhan was also injured.
The agency said they had been reporting on attacks by the SNA on Tishreen Dam and the Qere Qozaq bridge since December 8. The SNA has received Turkish air support for its offensive.
ANHA said the journalists were killed Thursday afternoon on the road between Tishreen Dam and the town of Sarrin, located nearly 25 kilometers from the dam.
A Turkey-based press freedom organization condemned the attack.
“We condemn and do not accept this attack on our colleagues,” the Dicle Firat Journalist Association based in Diyarbakir (Amed) said on Friday, demanding accountability. “Nazim and Cihan were two valuable journalists who brought the truth of the war in northern and eastern Syria to the public.”
With the rebel offensive that toppled the Syrian regime, the SNA and its Turkish backers launched an offensive against Kurdish forces on multiple fronts in the northeast.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which serves as the official military wing of the Rojava administration, said on Wednesday that the SNA has continued its attacks on the symbolic Kurdish city of Kobane and posed a threat to the Tishreen Dam despite a United States-brokered ceasefire that was supposed to remain in effect until the end of the week.
Turkey’s defense ministry on Thursday denied there was a ceasefire in place.
The SDF has killed at least 21 SNA fighters while defending Tishreen Dam, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Wednesday.
Kurdish officials have repeatedly warned that attacks on the dam have severely damaged the structure and its operations.
Turkey considers the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the backbone of the SDF, as the Syrian front for the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist group by Ankara.
