Afrinpost – Special
Last Friday, a settler khatib called in a mosque in Afrin’s old neighborhood, to clear the land from the “National Army” militia, affiliated with the Turkish occupation, in order to stop the thefts carried out by the militants in the occupied Afrin region in northern Syria.
This came during a sermon delivered by the so-called “Sheikh Muhammad,” a settler from Eastern Ghouta, he is affiliated with the Army of Islam militia, saying, “We must clean this land from mercenaries and money slaves, the thefts must stop,” referring to the “National Army” militia associated with the Muslim Brotherhood classified as terrorists in many countries of the world.
According to the Afrinpost correspondent, what was mentioned in Sheikh Muhammad’s sermon angered the “Hamzat and Ahrar Al Sharqiya” militias who were attending it, which led to sharp verbal altercations between them and the “Army of Islam” militants defending the position of the khatib who was forced to end the sermon, and those who object to the Sheikh’s words left the mosque.
The reporter indicated that the worshipers of the “Hamzat and Ahrar Al-Sharqiya” militias decided not to perform prayers with the militants and supporters of the Army of Islam from now, and not to go to that mosque again.
The state of tension continues between the Army of Islam militia and the Hamzat militia in Afrin, since clashes erupted between the two sides on May 28, 2019, which revealed the existence of a secret prison run by the “Hamzat”, which contains many Kurdish women forcibly hidden by the militia.
