The Assyrian journalist Shamoun Zitou has claimed that more Assyrians have been killed by the Kurdish militia than by ISIS in northeastern Syria since the outbreak of the civil war.
"The harm inflicted on our people by the SDF, as we have seen, has been worse than the harm inflicted by ISIS. Because the number of Assyrians killed by the Kurds is bigger than the number killed by ISIS", he said during a news show aired on Monday 26 January on Assyria TV.
"They are the ones who bombed the Assyrian restaurants, the Miami restaurant and the others. They bombed them and blamed the bombings on ISIS in order to scare our people and push them out of their areas", Zitou continued. A total of 19 Assyrians were killed and 30 wounded in three bombings in December 2015 in central Qamishly targeting Assyrian-owned restaurants Miami and Gabriel. While ISIS claimed the attacks, Assyrian observers have noted that several details did not match how ISIS operates.
"What SDF did, it blamed on ISIS, including the assassination of David Jendo and Elias Nasser. They are doing the same thing now again. They are not better than ISIS even despite the fact that the new government was associated with ISIS and Al Qaeda", Zitou said.
The April 2015 assassination of Assyrian leader David Jendo was initially claimed by ISIS but it was later revealed that it was carried out by YPG operatives after Elias Nasser managed to survive the assassination attempt and could reveal the identities of the assassins. The YPG then admitted what had happened but claimed that its members had acted on their own, adding credibility to Assyrian claims that the YPG was orchestrating attacks and blaming them on jihadist groups.
