ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria (Rojava) said on Saturday that there is a targeted “disinformation campaign” to undermine the force by falsely linking them to the terror attack on a Christian church in Damascus.
“A renewed targeted online disinformation campaign falsely claims that an ISIS [Islamic State] member who contributed to the terrorist attack on the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus had previously received kerosene aid from an American NGO while residing in al-Hawl camp. This narrative is part of a broader effort to attack the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), continuing a pattern of falsifying documents to undermine their legitimacy,” the SDF said in a statement on Saturday.
On Sunday, a suicide bomber affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS) entered Mar Elias Church in Damascus during mass, opened fire on worshippers and detonated an explosive vest, killing 25 people and injuring 63 others. The attack renewed fears of sectarian violence in Syria as it tries to recover from decades of dictatorship and years of civil war.
Syrian authorities arrested six suspects and killed two others during a raid on an ISIS cell. Interior Ministry spokesperson Noureddine al-Baba said that two of the suspects were not Syrian nationals and had infiltrated the capital from al-Hol camp that houses thousands of ISIS family members in the SDF-held northeast.
The SDF denied the connection, saying that it reviewed camp files and no one fitting the ministry’s description had been released during the timeframe specified. The SDF, which is keeping several thousand ISIS fighters in prisons, further explained that the camp mostly comprises women and children rather than foreign fighters of ISIS.
The director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria Program, Charles Lister, then shared on X a document that claimed to show one of the suspects received aid in al-Hol delivered by the humanitarian organization Blumont.
Blumont on Friday said the document is not legitimate. “We are aware of images circulating online reportedly from our team’s work in Syria. The images are not authentic and do not reflect how we track the distribution of humanitarian assistance,” it said.
Lister has since deleted the post and on Friday he confirmed that the document was fake but said a senior Syrian government official had confirmed that two of the six members of the ISIS cell were “smuggled out from al-Hol in late-2024.”
Smuggling people out of al-Hol is a problem at the sprawling camp. The SDF has reported arresting suspected smugglers. In March they captured a man accused of “smuggling terrorists, particularly foreign ISIS women, out of al-Hol camp.
The accusations against the SDF come at a sensitive time as the Kurdish administration in Rojava is in talks with the interim government about their integration into national institutions. Kurds are looking for guarantees of their political and cultural rights that had been denied under the former regime.
SDF chief Mazloum Abdi and Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed a landmark agreement in March over the future of SDF and the Kurdish enclave. Several articles of the agreement have been implemented, including swapping of prisoners, and there are ongoing talks between both sides.
Sheikhmous Ahmed, who supervises Rojava’s camps, told Rudaw English on Friday that the recent deadly clashes between Damascus-affiliated armed groups and religious minorities like the Druze and Alawites created the belief that only the SDF can protect the minorities.
He claimed that Damascus is using the attack on the church as a pretext to spread disinformation about the SDF as part of “a smear campaign.”
Rojava has been internationally praised for its coexistence and women rights.
Violence broke out in early March in the Alawite-majority coastal areas of western Syria after loyalists of ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched attacks on security forces affiliated with the new Syrian leadership.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) then reported that around 1,500 people, mostly Alawite civilians, have been killed in the violence. The UK-based war monitor added that most casualties were caused by government or government-affiliated forces.
In April, global human rights watchdog Amnesty International censured the “mass killings,” accusing Damascus of perpetrating a “war crime” against the minority group and warning of further “atrocities” if accountability is not enforced.
Many members of the Druze community were killed in late April following attacks by groups linked to Damascus. The fighting was initially triggered by an audio recording that was allegedly blasphemous toward the Prophet Muhammad. Initially attributed to a prominent Druze cleric, the recording was later discredited by both the cleric and Syrian authorities.
