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WASHINGTON —A powerful jihadist group has taken over a strategic town in northwest Syria following days of clashes with several militia groups who were controlling the area, local sources said.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as al-Nusra Front, entered the town of Afrin on Thursday after its former rulers withdrew their forces, according to residents and a monitor group.
Afrin, a Kurdish-majority city, had been under the control of Turkish-backed armed groups since 2018 after a Turkish military offensive that ousted Syrian Kurdish forces that Ankara considers terrorists.
A resident in the town told VOA that he witnessed "tanks and military vehicles belonging to [HTS] rolling into Afrin after the other militias who were previously in our city abandoned their positions and left with their vehicles and equipment."
The resident, who declined to reveal his identity because it could endanger him, added that "he heard about very small skirmishes between the two sides in a few parts of the city, but the militiamen didn't really resist the oncoming militants."
HTS is an Islamist group that has been in control of most of Idlib province in northwest Syria, one of the few areas that are outside the control of Syrian government forces.
Designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the group was the main affiliate of al-Qaida in Syria until 2018 when it formally severed ties with the global terror group. Experts, however, say the militant group has maintained its al-Qaida-inspired ideology.
In the takeover of Afrin, at least two other similar Islamist groups were involved with HTS, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Thursday's developments follow three days of clashes between HTS and its allies on the one hand and Turkish-backed groups on the other in the vicinity of Afrin.
Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory, told VOA that at least 30 positions in the area had been controlled by HTS fighters prior to their controlling of Afrin.
Several armed opposition factions fight under the umbrella of the Syrian National Army (SNA), which is backed by Turkey. Rights groups have accused these Islamist groups of abuses against civilians in Afrin and elsewhere in northwest Syria.
Military experts said the recent advances of HTS show that SNA factions have had deep divisions.
"The most important point in this development is that the SNA has been divided into two sides," said Ahmed Rahal, a former Syrian army general who currently works as a military analyst in Istanbul, Turkey. "One faction has obviously sided with [HTS leader Abu Mohammad] al-Jolani and one side against him."
Rahal told VOA that "handing over Afrin this way and the withdrawal of SNA fighters from the city show that these fighters don't have a plan nor a desire to fight."
"There is currently a talk about regrouping efforts to try to retake Afrin, but I don't think these SNA factions are capable of executing such plans," he added.
Rights groups voiced concerns that the HTS takeover of the northwestern Syrian town could expose the local population to further abuses.
"It is still not clear what is going to happen as the situation is still unfolding, but if al-Nusra stays in Afrin, there certainly will be more human rights violations against our civilians," said Ibrahim Sheikho, a member of the Human Rights Committee in Afrin, who was displaced from the city following the Turkish invasion in 2018.
"These people are even more radical than the groups that had ruled Afrin since 2018. Al-Nusra has the same ideology as ISIS and they will impose it on people in Afrin," he told VOA, using another acronym for the Islamic State terror group.
The Turkish government has not yet commented on the recent reported developments.
This story originated in VOA's Kurdish Service.