At least 30 towns and villages in northern Syria have been looted by Syrian regime forces and allied Shiite militias since April 2019, the Syrian Network for Human Rights said in legal report on Tuesday.
The report has documented that about 30 villages and towns in the northern suburbs of Hama province, the southern suburbs of Idleb, and parts of Aleppo have been subjected to robberies and the looting of property by regime forces and pro-Iran militias.
The report notes that these stolen goods and property are being sold in the markets of al-Sqailbiya town in the suburbs of Hama. As the report states, this is reminiscent of what was recorded previously in 2012 and 2013 when the Syrian regime’s militiamen opened similar markets to sell goods they’d looted, after taking control of the cities of Homs and Hama.
Also, the Syrian monitoring group revealed that some other armed groups have also carried out looting of areas they have taken control of, including the forces of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (YPD), the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), extremist Islamist groups (ISIS and al-Nusra Front), and factions of the armed opposition.
Although the scale of the looting carried out by the Syrian, Iranian and Russian regime forces remains by a long way the most widespread and systematic, according to the report.
The regime offensive in Idleb province and parts of Aleppo has displaced more than 1,041,000 people from their homes and killed 700 people, including 91 women, 212 children and 17 rescue workers, over the past three months, the Syrian Response Coordination Group said.
The nine-year-old war has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands and forced 13 million people from their homes, half of whom have left their shattered homeland.
This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
