The Media and Communication Center of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced the martyrdom of a fighter of the Assyrian Khabur Guards in northeastern Syria.

According to the report, Zia Tal Tamir was martyred on Sunday evening following the Turkish occupation’s brutal shelling against the Tal Shenan village, Tal Tamir.

Around the same time, the nearby villages of al-Dardara and Qubour al-Qarajneh also came under fire from the Turkish army and jihadist auxiliary forces, and property damage was reported. Some of the shells fired from the occupied zone, some five kilometers away, struck in the immediate vicinity of a Russian base in the north of the city.

For days now, the Christian town of Til Temir has again been under constant fire. Over the weekend, the villages of Tawila and Til Tawil came under massive fire. Especially in Til Tawil, whose historical name is Bnay Roumta, the population has suffered massive damage. Only rubble remains of several houses as a result of the bombardments, and the wall in front of the village church also shows signs of damage.

The history of Til Temir

The Khabur river extends along the Khabur valley in the northeast of Syria. Here, where the town of Til Temir (Kurdish name: Girê Xurma), a reflection of the population mosaic of Syria, is located, the Nestorians - Assyrians from (Hakkari - who had fled to northern Iraq during the genocide of Christians in the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1918, settled in 1933. The League of Nations in Geneva awarded them the settlement area. Their second exodus was preceded by the Simele massacre: some 9000 Assyrians, mainly men and young people, were murdered in various villages in the Duhok region. The village of Simele, which was particularly affected, gave its name to this genocide. There, under the leadership of the Iraqi military, some 350 people died.

The Assyrians from Hakkari founded 33 villages in the flat valley of the Khabur, while Chaldean Christians settled in another three villages. Before the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011, about 20,000 Assyrian Christians were still living here, in almost every village there was a church. Now there are not even 1,000 people left. Because of the jihadists almost all inhabitants fled abroad, most went to Canada, Australia or the US. Some of the villages are completely empty, those who stayed are mostly elderly people. Also, several hundred internally displaced persons from other regions of the country now live in Til Temir.