Deir ez-Zor – Civil and women's movements, along with tribal leaders from Deir ez-Zor province in northeastern Syria, issued a statement on Sunday, January 11, affirming that the resistance of the residents of the Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo and their will to live are stronger than all projects of genocide and aggression.

The statement, issued after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militants committed violations amounting to war crimes against civilians in the besieged neighborhoods, was signed by tribal sheikhs and leaders, civil councils, the Autonomous Administration of the province, women's committees including the Zenobia Women's Association, and municipalities.

The statement strongly condemned the actions of "the Turkish-backed factions and the Syrian Interim Government in the Ashrafieh, Sheikh Maqsoud, and Bani Zeid neighborhoods, including the forced displacement of residents and the killing of women and children under the pretext of fighting the Syrian Democratic Forces."

The statement pointed out that these neighborhoods have been free of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) since April 1st of last year, according to an agreement between the neighborhood council and the interim government. "Everyone knows that the SDF withdrew from these neighborhoods under a previous agreement, leaving only the Internal Security Forces (Asayish), who continued to perform their duty of protecting the residents. This exposes the falsity of these pretexts and confirms the criminal nature of these attacks."

The statement emphasized that "the forced displacement of residents by these factions, after they had already been displaced from the Afrin region, constitutes a crime against humanity." It added that "the international community's silence regarding what is happening in these neighborhoods foreshadows a repeat of the massacres that occurred on the Syrian coast and with our people in Suwaida, and gives a green light to the rogue factions sponsored by Turkey, which provides them with military and political cover."

The statement called upon the international community, human rights organizations, and all free and honorable people not to remain silent about this war targeting these neighborhoods, "in order to protect the lives of our children and stop this tyranny that stands in the way of any Syrian consensus and threatens the social fabric that characterizes Syria."

The statement concluded by emphasizing support for the resistance and the self-administration project until Syria achieves stability and democracy. "The people of rural Deir ez-Zor, from this region where the most brutal terrorist organization (ISIS) was defeated, affirm their commitment to moving forward with the self-administration and the Syrian Democratic Forces while opposing any initiative or group seeking to erode the Syrian Democracy and sow division in the territories of north and east Syria. They reiterated their firm conviction that Syria will only achieve stability as a democratic, pluralistic, and decentralized state that guarantees all its national and religious components the right to coexistence and fair representation in all branches of government."