Iraqi, Syrian Kurds pelt U.S. troops with rocks and potatoes as they pull out from Syria
Angry Iraqi Kurds gesture and threw stones at U.S military convoy as they withdrawing from Syrian Kurdistan, Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, October 21, 2019. Photo: Screengrab/Video SM.
HEWLÊR/QAMISHLO,— Betrayed Syrian Kurds hurled potatoes and abuse at a withdrawing convoy of US troops as they passed through the main Kurdish city of Qamishlo in Syrian Kurdistan on their way to Iraqi Kurdistan, after Trump vowed to pull U.S. troops from Syria.
Video footage shows armored vehicles passing through the city of Qamishlo and residents shouting ‘No America’ and ‘America liar,’ in English. The clip then shows the residents throwing potatoes at the convoy.
‘Like rats, America is running away,’ one man shouted in Arabic, according to a translation of the clip.
Another man shouted obscenities and talked of babies in Kurdish-held areas who have died in the Turkish offensive.
One of the vehicles reversed down the street and over a sidewalk as several people walked after it, shaking their fists in the air and shouting insults.
Meanwhile In Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan region, Kurdish protesters on Monday hurled stones and insults at a convoy of US armoured vehicles coming from northeastern Syria in anger to the pullback of the US forces. See the video on YouTube.
Twelve people were arrested by Iraqi Kurdish Asayish (security) in Khabat district after hurling stones at a convoy of US vehicles coming from northeastern Syria, local TV reported.
U.S. troops start crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan on Monday as part of a broader withdrawal from Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) ordered by President Donald Trump, a decision that allowed Turkey to launch an offensive against the Kurdish forces which for years was a U.S. ally battling Islamic State.
Betrayed Syrian Kurds pelt U.S. armoured vehicles with potatoes over withdrawing from Syrian Kurdistan, Qamishlo city, Rojava, October 21, 2019. Photo: Screengrab video/ANHA News Agency, Hawar.
More than 100 vehicles crossed the border into Iraq early on Monday from the northeast tip of Syria, where Turkey agreed to pause its offensive for five days under a deal with Washington.
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Tuesday that Washington aimed to bring U.S. troops withdrawing from Syria back to the United States, and not for them to stay in Iraq indefinitely.
“The aim isn’t to stay in Iraq interminably, the aim is to pull our soldiers out and eventually get them back home,” Esper said at the Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The United States views the Kurdish People’s Protection Units YPG as a close ally in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
Syria’s Kurds have detained thousands of local and foreign fighters suspected of fighting for Islamic State, as well as thousands of related women and children.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.
Syria’s Kurds have established a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Syria during the country’s eight-year war.
(With files from Reuters | dailymail.co.uk | nrttv.com)
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