On Friday, June 28, unidentified gunmen kidnapped an elderly man in the city of Afrin, located in the Aleppo countryside in northwestern Syria, and transported him to an unknown location.
A local source told +963 that masked gunmen stormed the home of elderly Ibrahim Khalil Sharo in the Ashrafieh neighbourhood of Afrin. Claiming his car, owned for the past 14 years, had been stolen, the gunmen abducted him and took him away without explanation.
The source added that Sharo, originally from the village of Arshqibar in the Afrin countryside, had recently returned to the city following a long period of displacement in northern Aleppo. His home in the village had previously been seized by armed groups.
The source also confirmed that the elderly man suffers from chronic illnesses and had travelled to Aleppo for surgery. He returned to Afrin later that same night, when the kidnapping occurred. According to the source, the kidnappers claimed to be members of the Internal Security forces under the Syrian Ministry of Interior.
However, when Sharo’s family went to the Internal Security Centre to inquire about his whereabouts, personnel at the centre denied that he was in their custody and said the individuals involved in the abduction were not affiliated with their department.
The human rights organisation Afrin – Syria also reported that armed men had kidnapped Ibrahim Khalil Sharo along with his vehicle, and that his fate remains unknown.
The organisation stated that Sharo’s family is urgently calling on the Internal Security forces to intervene, uncover his whereabouts, arrest the perpetrators, and bring them to justice.
Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, dozens of kidnappings and targeted assassinations have been reported across various regions of Syria, amid the widespread presence of firearms, makeshift weapons, and criminal gangs.
On June 19, a separate incident occurred in the Afrin region when a young man was shot dead by unidentified gunmen, according to a local source who spoke to +963.
The victim, Mustafa Jamil Sheikho, was reportedly killed while guarding a set of solar panels owned by his family. He was 17 years old and a resident of Haj Hosni village in the Jenderes district of the Afrin region.
