About 150 Kurdish women in the war-wracked northern Syrian province of Aleppo have set up a fighting battalion, a monitoring group said on Saturday.
“The Kurdish popular committees have set up the first women’s battalion, comprising some 150 women fighters. The battalion is named the Martyr Rokan Battalion,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“While women are now fighting alongside the rebels, pro-regime forces and Kurdish militia, this is the first women’s battalion as such,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Photo: AFP / HO / SOHR
The Observatory circulated an amateur photograph of the battalion, showing scores of members in military fatigues, standing in rows before their female leadership.
“Women are now playing a major role in the fighting in Syria,” Abdel Rahman said.
The women’s battalion was announced in Ifrin, the scene late last year of violence pitting Kurdish fighters against Arab rebels fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Al-Assad’s troops pulled out from majority Kurdish areas last year, and while Kurds have been split over the anti-regime revolt in Syria, most have chosen to remain neutral in the conflict.
An agreement in Ras al-Ain on the Turkish border last week brought an end to fighting between Kurds and Islamist rebels, though some activists have described the agreement brokered by a prominent Christian dissident as fragile.
The announcement of the Kurdish women’s battalion comes a month after pro-regime forces set up the National Defense Forces, a paramilitary unit in which women of all ages have been asked to volunteer.
Anti-regime activists have also distributed images of women fighters joining rebel ranks.
“Women are fighting on all the fronts now, though it’s possibly the Islamist rebel ranks that have the fewest women taking part in them,” the Observatory’s Abdel Rahman said.
A female activist in Latakia Province said via the Internet that women often transport weapons and supplies for rebels because they are less likely to be searched at army and security checkpoints.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but