The Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) eliminated Mutlu Kacar, a terrorist in charge of PKK/YPG in northern Syria’s Ain al-Arab, also known as Kobani, security sources said on Monday. Kacar, codenamed "Karker Andok," was behind attacks on Turkish troops in Syria.
Kacar, who joined the terrorist organization in 1997 and engaged in terrorist activities in the Haftanin region of northern Iraq in 2009, sustaining injuries to his hand and eye in clashes with security forces.
Having operated as a self-proclaimed "head of the Makhmur Rustem Cudi Camp" in northern Iraq in 2013, Syria's Tel Rifaat region in 2015, and as the so-called chief of local forces in Tal Rifaat for the PKK/YPG in 2020, Kacar assumed the role of ringleader of Ain al-Arab for the PKK/YPG earlier this year.
In 2022, he went to al-Malikiyah in northeastern Syria. The year before, he ordered a terrorist attack on a convoy of Turkish security forces operating in the Euphrates Shield Operation area in northern Syria, resulting in the death of two soldiers on July 24, 2021. He was also behind attacks on the Syrian opposition army in Syria’s north. Türkiye has earlier issued an arrest warrant for Kacar on charges of membership of a terrorist group.
The terrorist group enjoys U.S. support in Syria’s north where it operates under the name of YPG. Türkiye’s operations in cooperation with the Syrian opposition forces further pushed it to the northeast but occasionally, it attempts to break into the opposition-controlled areas. On Sunday, PKK/YPG terrorists attacked the opposition forces guarding an outpost in the south of the town of Azaz, local security sources said. Syrian forces repelled the attack that ended up with an unspecified number of casualties among PKK terrorists, Anadolu Agency (AA) reported on Monday. The terrorist group often carries out attacks from Tal Rifaat and Manbij it occupied toward the opposition-controlled front line.
Local sources said the PKK/YPG also abducted a 13-year-old child in a part of Aleppo it controlled, in the latest instance of forced recruitment of children by the terrorist group.
The terrorist group recruited over 1,000 children in Syria in 2022, according to a report by the United Nations. The U.N. annual report on children in armed conflict covers January to December 2022. According to the report, 32 children as young as 11 were recruited and used in Iraq.
"I am gravely concerned by the recruitment and use of children by the YPG/PKK. I urge them to end the recruitment and use of children and to release all children from its ranks," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the report released last summer. There were more than 2,438 grave violations against 2,407 children in Syria.
As many as 1,696 children in Syria were recruited and used mostly by PKK/YPG and other armed groups and non-state actors. The YPG recruited and used 1,274 children.
International law prohibits non-state armed groups from recruiting anyone under 18, and enlisting children under 15 is considered a war crime. The PKK/YPG’s use of child soldiers has been repeatedly documented and criticized by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Though the PKK/YPG initially signed a pledge with Geneva Call – a Swiss humanitarian organization that works to "protect civilians in armed conflict" – to stop the use of child soldiers in 2014, its use of child soldiers has only increased since then.
