ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Dozens of people have been abducted in northwest Syria’s Kurdish enclave Afrin in just over a month, a local watchdog said on Saturday.
In the past couple of days, “28 civilians have been abducted” in Afrin, raising the number of kidnappings since the beginning of 2025 to 87, the Violations Documentation Center (VDC) stated.
The human rights monitor accused the Syrian National Army (SNA) of “kidnapping 28 citizens from various areas of Afrin” over the past few days.
“Citizens are regularly abducted from their homes, which are stormed, searched, looted and destroyed,” it stated.
“Official statistics suggest that the number of kidnapped individuals in Afrin alone during 2025 has reached 87 people, including two children under 18 and six women,” it added.
The SNA is an umbrella organization of militia groups formed in opposition to ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and backed by Turkey. They are accused by international human rights monitors of carrying out abuses against the Kurdish population in Afrin, which has been under SNA control for seven years.
The VDC said it documented 700 kidnappings in 2024, and 461 in 2023, and said that while “more than 720 abductions were recorded in 2022” the real number is likely higher. The watchdog also claimed to have “documented cases of civilians dying under torture.”
These abductions chiefly occur in “regions held by the Syrian National Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham situated east and northwest of Syria,” VDC stated, adding that “the majority of the detainees cannot be reached after their detention and their fate remains unknown.”
Multiple people were arrested in Afrin this weekend after raising the Kurdistan flag during a spontaneous reception of visiting security forces affiliated with the new authorities in Damascus.
After the forces departed, “Afrin witnessed widespread arrests of those who went out to welcome the members of the public security forces,” spokesperson of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) Kamal Akif said in a statement.
DAANES is the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria. It demanded “formal clarification” from the new Syrian leadership about the purpose of the visit to Afrin.
