Baladi News – Lattakia (Abu Ammar Al - Ladqani)
Syrian regime forces have been conducting a fierce and comprehensive arrest campaign lately in the city of Latakia, aimed at forcing young men into fulfilling their mandatory military. Dozens of mobile checkpoints were deployed in the main areas of the city, arresting 100 men between the age of 18 and 41 every day.
Abu Mohammed, a resident in the city, said to Baladi News, “The regime forces are in a scary state of alertness roaming around in search for young men at the age of compulsory service”.
“These guys are taken in big buses and cars to recruitment branches, where they are sorted and sent directly to battlefield on as needed basis”, the speaker clarified, indicating that such procedures made the city a big jail.
Fathers pay bribes to the officers in recruitment branches to release their sons in the city that received hundreds of families fleeing from battles in other parts of the country. Abu Waheed, one of those displaced people, said to Baladi News, “I had to send my sons out of Syria to prevent them from being arrested under compulsory recruitment,”
The speaker added that approximately twenty soldiers of those sent to battles are escorted to grave every day, and “the biggest loser is the homeland” according to him.
Latakia, Jableh and Al-haffah are the major cities which were abandoned by the majority of their young people for fear of compulsory recruitment. Statistics indicated that Latakia alone lost 25 thousands of its young men in battles, coupled with 30 thousands others who left the country, which raised the percentage of females to 75% in the city.