NEWS CENTER - Internal Security Forces have stated that forces affiliated with the Syrian Transitional Government are using young men they have kidnapped during attacks on the neighbourhoods of Şêxmeqsûd (Sheikh Maqsoud) and Eşrefiye (Ashrafieh) as human shields. 

 

Attacks by the Transitional Government on the Şêxmeqsûd and Eşrefiye neighbourhoods in the Syrian city of Aleppo continue. The Internal Security Forces Press Centre issued a statement regarding the attacks. 

 

The statement emphasised that forces affiliated with the Damascus government are using the young men they have kidnapped as human shields. 

 

The statement reads: “In an organized and blatant crime, factions of the Damascus government have resorted to imposing a suffocating siege on the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, accompanied by heavy shelling and the encirclement of residential areas with tanks, along with explicit threats of a full-scale invasion. This criminal attempt aims to exhaust the residents and force them into displacement. This systematic policy constitutes a flagrant violation of all international laws and norms and reveals a mindset that relies on military coercion and psychological pressure as tools to control civilians.

 

When this comprehensive attack failed to subdue the neighborhood and break the resilience of its residents, these factions escalated their crimes by kidnapping young men from Sheikh Maqsoud who had been forced to leave, pushing them into the front lines of their assault as human shields—a brutal practice that violates all humanitarian values. At the same time, they returned elderly people to the besieged neighborhood in an overt attempt to exploit them as a pressure tool and impose control over civilians without restraint.

 

These actions represent a dangerous and unprecedented escalation of humanitarian violations, combining siege, shelling, direct threats of force, and the use of civilians as human shields within a systematic strategy aimed at displacing residents and imposing daily acts of violence on the lives of innocent civilians.”