Stories of Resistance of Age - 10

Basle resistance.. 12 fighters defeated hundreds of Turkish soldiers and mercenaries

TOLIN HASSEN / SHERVIN MUSTAFA

Afrin became the talk in early 2018, witnessed resistance against the Turkish occupation army starting from January 20 and was called the Resistance of the Age which lasted for 58 days in its first stage and continues in its second stage until the moment.

 Afrin canton has 366 villages and towns in addition to Afrin city. All these villages witnessed heroic resistance by YPG, YPJ and Afrin people as they were subjected to brutal attacks by the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries who followed the scorched-earth policy in the occupation of Afrin. One of the villages that witnessed the exceptional resistance and unequal battles is Basle village of Şêrawa district.

12 Fighters liberated Basle village from hundreds soldiers and mercenaries

The story of the resistance that took place in Basle village recounted by the commander of Jabhat al-Akrad, Ahmed Berkel, who participated in the resistance with 11 fighters.

Ahmed Berkel says that before he went to Şêrawa district to participate in supporting the fighters of the People and Women Protection Units confronting the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries there, he had been stationed in the villages of Şêrawa district, and added, "On the 50th day of Resistance of Age, the command asked us to form a group of fighters, and went to Basle village, we formed a group of 12 fighters.”

At that time, the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries had occupied the village after it had been heavily bombed by warplanes, rocket launchers and tanks. The village was attacked by more than 100 soldiers and mercenaries supported by tanks and heavy weapons.

Although Basle village was a small village, but the enemy attacked it with all these numbers and equipment, so we decided to go to the village and hit the enemy. We headed towards the village at night because the movement during the day was difficult because of the reconnaissance warplanes.

When we arrived at the village borders, we divided ourselves into two groups. Each one was consisted of six fighters to enter the village together, and after entering the village, each group would be divided into two groups for speed of movement and hiding inside the village.

After planning for the attack, we moved cautiously towards the village through the olive groves surrounding the village. Each group went to one side. After slow and careful progress, it took about an hour to reach the first houses on the outskirts of the village.

And we deployed in the form of two groups, every 3 fighters moved together, and after we watched the village and monitored the movements of the enemy and the points of concentration, we assigned the first two points to attack them, and each group headed to a point and we began the attacks by throwing grenades at the points of the mercenaries’ concentration and gathering behind the houses and earth mounds.

We moved quickly among the houses into the village and began targeting everybody we faced from the occupation army and mercenaries. On the other side of the village, our comrades were also attacking the enemy as we heard the high sounds of bullets and began to move combing the village and moving from house to house to eliminate the occupation soldiers and mercenaries in the village.

The mercenaries' defenses collapsed quickly and dispersed, and they could no longer distinguish between their comrades and us. Each one of them fired randomly at the village’s houses and tried to flee.

The clashes lasted for more than an hour. At several points, we clashed with the mercenaries with the bladed weapons because some of the mercenaries, in their attempts to escape, came out directly and there was no time to fire and kill them.

Berkel pointed out to a strange incident happened with them that time which took place with a fighter named Kendal Hawar who was later martyred, "Once, we clashed with a number of mercenaries with bladed weapons and we fought with hands, the martyr Kendal was fighting one of the mercenaries after he managed to remove the weapon from the mercenary’s hand so the mercenary cling to the fighter Kendal in a bid to keep him on the ground and prevent him from shooting him.

The mercenary tried to take out any piece of the martyr Kendal’s quiver to hit him, and took his mobile phone, the mercenary pulled out the phone and left Kendal, fled quickly and hid behind a house and; then, we lost him and we could not find him. Then, the martyr Kendal said joking that these mercenaries even in front of death do not abandon stealing.

The fighter Ahmed Berkel continued, "We continued fighting and advancing in the village, and the Turkish soldiers and mercenaries were fleeing the village. As they were trying to withdraw, we targeted a BMB vehicle and destroyed it by RBG weapon and the rest of enemy escaped and left their Dushka weapon which we seized. We contacted with our comrades and they were fine. We combed the village to make sure if there were any Turkish soldiers or mercenaries. During the combing operation, we found 25 bodies of the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries except for the wounded and the killed that the enemy took during escaping. This operation was a strike to the enemy and inflicted them huge losses.

Berkel added, "By dawn, we heard the sounds of warplanes hovering over the village in addition to the reconnaissance plane. After it toured many rounds over the village, 3 warplanes raided the village brutally and launched the missiles toward the village in addition to the shelling by tanks and artilleries. We could no longer move or operate the walky-talky devices and mobile phones to contact with our comrades because the reconnaissance plane was monitoring the wireless devices' frequencies and shelling their positions. We tried to hide and avoid the warplane. After the brutal shelling, the occupation returned to attack the village and launched a land attack. Their numbers increased this time and doubled. We could not do anything and we allowed the mercenaries to enter the village to clash with them to avoid the warplanes’ raids. We stationed in our positions and the enemy began to enter the village. We clashed with them again for hours and I tried to contact with our comrades, but the news was bad because 7 of our comrades were martyred and the martyr Kendal Hawar was among them.  

We remained 5 fighters in the village repelling more than 200 elements of the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries. Then, I contacted with the command and I told them what happened, and they asked us to withdraw from the village. We headed toward Soghonakeh village next to Basle village.

The commander Ahmed Berkel concluded the story, "The aggression on Afrin was an international plot. Everybody participated to shed the blood of our people and fighters in Afrin. In spite of the significant discrepancy between our weapons and numbers and the sophisticated and prohibited weapons used by the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries in addition to their huge numbers, we did not abandon the resistance and continued defending our lands till the last drop of our blood. We pledged our martyrs to avenge them, and we are now resisting in the second stage of the Resistance of the Age. We would turn Afrin into a nightmare for the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries till we liberate Afrin from the occupiers."   

A.H

ANHA