Tehran, 02 June_Turkish-backed Takfiri militants have burned local residents’ homes in the northern countryside of Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah, as they continue to commit crimes against the local population, including extortion and looting of their property.
Local sources, requesting not to be named, told Syria’s official news agency SANA on Monday that several homes in the villages of al-Qasimia and al-Rihaniyya, which lie northwest of Tal Tamr town, had been set ablaze by the extremists the previous day.
The sources added that the acts of arson took place only a few days after Turkish-backed militants set fire to a number of farmlands in al-Qasimia village.
Turkish-backed militants were deployed to northern Syria last October after Turkish military forces launched a long-threatened cross-border invasion in a declared attempt to push the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militants away from border areas.
Ankara views the US-backed YPG as a terrorist organization tied to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region in Turkey since 1984.
More than 200,000 people have been internally displaced by the Turkish-led offensive, according to the United Nations.
On October 22 last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed a memorandum of understanding that asserted the YPG militants had to withdraw from the Turkish-controlled "safe zone" in northeastern Syria within 150 hours, after which Ankara and Moscow would run joint patrols around the area.
Syria finds US-made TOW missiles in southern region
Separately, Syrian government officials have discovered a considerable amount of weapons, including US-built TOW anti-tank missiles, while conducting clean-up operations in the southern sector of the war-ravaged Arab country.
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