Fawaz Al-Shalal, Baladi News, Manbij
A state of anger swept over the popular circles in the city of Manbij after the kidnapping of an Arab girl by Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) from the village of Al-Jaat northeast of Manbij.
One of the girl's relatives told Baladi News that "a checkpoint affiliated to "Syrian Democratic Forces" arrested the girl at the entrance of the village of Al-Jaat after allowing the people to enter the city for a short period of time in order to bring some stuff from their houses".
"People of the village gathered at the checkpoint to know the reason behind her kidnapping and called for her release, to which the members at the checkpoint responded by shooting at people to disperse them ", he added.
The girl's family said in a statement: "(SDF) have gathered the people of Al-Jaat village located northeast of Manbij and gave them the permission to enter the village for four hours in order to take their stuff out of the village as they are banned of entering the village after this deadline.
The statement added: "the 20 year-old girl, Fatemah Saleh Al-Haj returned to check her family's house which was bombarded by the coalition air force, while she was passing in front of Oum Al-Qura mosque, SDF's stronghold, a force of SDF militants intercepted and took her to an unknown area. Some eyewitnesses told her father of what happened, then he went to the mosque to look for her, but SDF militias denied being there. Later on, people of the village demonstrated denouncing such a crime, but SDF forces responded by opening fires above their heads. By then, one of the SDF officials was forced to confess kidnapping the girl claiming that she has volunteered in the ranks of their forces and promised the people of bringing her back on Saturday 3/6/2016, but he didn't fulfill his promise.
Dozens of cases, violations and kidnapping have recently practiced against girls and boys aiming at recruiting them in the ranks of YPG affiliated to Democratic Union Party, the military wing of PKK in Syria.