SYRIAN STUDENTS EXPRESS FEARS TO GOVT-KURDISH CLASH

Students of al-Furat University in Hasakah attending a lecture. (Images: ARA News)

Hasakah, Suriah, 17 Ramadan 1435/15 July 2014 (MINA) – Students of the Faculty of Science in Hasakah expressed their concerns about the possibility of the renewal of clashes between the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) and the gunmen loyal to the Syrian regime, who may try to regain control over the vicinity of the college’s building which falls at the moment under the YPG control.

The YPG forces (military arm of the Democratic Union Party) controlled the building of the Faculty of Science in central Hasakah and its surroundings after clashes with pro-Assad militants of the National Defence Army (backed by gunmen from the Youth Party for Justice and Development) last May, ARA News quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

Several students in the Faculty of Science of al-Furat University in Hasakah, who conditioned anonymity, told ARA News that the YPG hold the faculty’s building in the neighbourhood of Misherfa raised its flag at its top, after removing the Syrian official flag and pictures of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from the entire building. The YPG forces also installed a checkpoint near the same building.

The same sources emphasized that the YPG fighters do not interfere in the internal affairs of the college, which is still run by the University of al-Furat Presidency of the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education.

Speaking to ARA News, Joan Abdullah, a student at al-Furat University in Hasakah, said: “My colleagues and I live in a continuous state of fear of potential renewal of clashes in the vicinity of the college, which may claim lives of innocent students through intentional shots or stray bullets.

“We may be also expose to arbitrary arrest by the militants without any right,” he said.

Rewan Hussein, a student in the Department of Mathematics in Hasakah, talked to ARA News saying: “We all remember the female student Dunya Sino, who was killed by a stray bullet in the campus, following the clashes in Geweran neighbourhood (between the YPG and the National Defence militants.”

“We do not want to undergo that experience once again,” he angrily said.

Noteworthy, clashes erupted between the YPG forces on the one hand, and the regime-linked National Defence militia backed by gunmen from the Youth Party for Justice and Development on the other hand, in Aziziya, Salihiya, and al-Mufti neighbourhoods on May 20, last year. Those clashes expanded and continued for three days where both conflicting parties left casualties behind.

However, the clashes stopped abruptly in the mid of the third day, because of the Hasakah Governor intervention to resolve the dispute, according to local sources. While fears of the return of the clashes are growing with the recent control of the YPG over the Faculty of Science in the city’s university and the installation of checkpoints by the Kurdish forces. (T/P09/p04)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)