On Thursday, unidentified gunmen abducted seven Kurdish civilians in an Aleppo suburb, while heading to the town of Afrin in Aleppo province, northern Syria, and took them to an unknown destination, local sources reported.

On Thursday, unidentified gunmen abducted seven Kurdish civilians in an Aleppo suburb, while heading to the town of Afrin in Aleppo province, northern Syria, and took them to an unknown destination, local sources reported.

Speaking to ARA News on the phone, Khalil Midanki, based in Afrin, said that unidentified armed group halted a passenger bus near al-Faisal’s mill on the road between Aleppo and Afrin on Thursday morning.

“The gunmen abducted seven men and left the driver along with children and women after taking the driver’s ID card,” Midanki reported, based on the driver’s statements.

Midanki pointed out that according to the driver and other sources in Afrin, al-Nusra Front (the al-Qaeda branch in Syria) is behind the operation, adding that 12 passengers were on the bus during the incident, most of them are residents of the Kurdish-majority neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsoud in the city of Aleppo. 

In the meantime, activists from Afrin published on the social networking site Facebook the names of the seven abducted citizens: Nabi Hassan, Shukri Hambasho, Mohamed Mahmoud, Walid Hassan, Mustafa Ahmed Barakat, Shekho Suleiman, and Hassan Osman.

Noteworthy, dozens of Kurdish civilians from Afrin have been subject to mass kidnappings on the road to Aleppo since 2013. The first incident was reported in May 23, 2013, when military factions of the Syrian armed opposition abducted more than 100 civilians near the town of Darat Azza on the highway between Aleppo and Afrin. 

Reporting by: Redwan Bizar