Four Syrian civilians were killed on Tuesday night from shelling by the alliance of Turkish armed forces and the Turkish-backed rebel group, the Syrian National Army (SNA), in Sefawiyê village, in the north of Ain Issa and Tell Tamer provinces of North East Syria, according to ANHA.
Zêdan Xelef El-Îsa (54) and his children Ziyad, Mûne and Hûda were killed as Sefawiyê was targeted by heavy weapons, tanks and mortars.
Turkish armed forces and the SNA last night targeted Sefawiyê, located three kilometres east of Sergirak along the southern M4 Highway, with heavy weapons yesterday.
Whilst three children and their father were killed during the attack, another child of the family and the mother were also heavily wounded.
“At around 2:30 last night, Sefawiyê village, close to Sergirak, was bombed and a family was wounded and taken to the hospital. We could not transfer the father and his three children to the hospital in Raqqa, because they were seriously wounded. The father and his three children were martyred,” said Abdulqadir Al-Ahmed, a health worker at the Martyr Umer Eluş Hospital in an interview with ANHA.
“The condition of the mother and the other child, whom we transferred to the hospital in Raqqa, is also serious,” Al-Ahmad noted.
Al-Ahmad also stated the ages of the three children who were killed by the shelling are between 8 and 10.
Ain Issa, an important junction linking Aleppo and Al-Hasakah via the international M4 highway which runs through the district, is around 45 km away from Tell Abyad along the Syrian-Turkish border. Tell Abyad was captured in October 2019 during Turkey’s offensive, dubbed ‘Operation Peace Spring.’
Since then, Turkey has mobilised forces around Ain Issa whilst its proxies have intensified their presence throughout the regions that have been captured by Turkey.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, bombings carried out by Turkey and its proxies displaced about 4,500 civilians, almost half of the whole population, from Ain Issa.