YPG/PKK terrorists continue to kidnap girls in Syria

By Mohamad Misto and Ethem Emre Ozcan

QAMISHLI, Syria (AA) - YPG/PKK terrorists kidnapped a 16-year-old girl in northeastern Syria to forcibly recruit her, according to local sources on Sunday.

Terrorists continue to kidnap children by separating them from their families in areas under the terror group’s occupation.

The terror group kidnapped Ravan Umran Alliko on Friday as she was getting out of her school in a village in the city of Qamishli, the sources said.

Terrorists took Alliko to the so-called safety center in Qamishli's western Himo village to forcibly recruit her.

Later, the Alliko family went to the village of Himo on Friday and asked for their children, but terrorists claimed the girl was not with them.

Last month, the terrorist organization also kidnapped a 13-year-old girl in Qamishli.

According to the US Department of State's 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report, the terror group recruits and forcibly abducts children for conscription.

"The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG and YPJ) in northwest Syria continued to recruit, train, and use boys and girls as young as 12 years old; since 2017, international observers reported that YPG and YPJ recruit -- at times by force -- children from displacement camps in northeast Syria," the report also said.

Also, the UN Human Rights Council published new findings in a report on Jan. 16 that YPG/PKK terrorists were using child soldiers in Syria.

Virginia Gamba, the UN secretary-general's special representative on children in armed conflicts, met with a YPG/PKK terrorist in June 2019 in Geneva and signed a deal to end the recruitment of child soldiers, another proof of the terror group's war crimes and crimes against humanity.

No other UN publications since then reported compliance with this deal, nor an end to the practice.

In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and EU -- has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants. The YPG is PKK's Syrian offshoot. YPJ is the women's wing of YPG/PKK in northern Iraq and Syria.

* Writing by Faruk Zorlu in Ankara.