A targeted drone attack by the Turkish state claimed the lives of YPJ Military Council Command members Nûcan Ocalan and Canda Cûdî, and Manbij Military Council Commander Şervîn Serdar in Manbij on 15 September.

Foreign and European Affairs Minister and Minister of Immigration and Asylum of Luxembourg Jean Asselborn condemned the attack which targeted a car on the move on the road to the village of Hetabat in southern Manbij.

In a statement on the social media platform X, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg said: “FM Asselborn deeply regrets the killing in a targeted drone strike of 3 members of the Women’s Defence Units (YPJ) in Manbij, Syria last Friday. The Minister met with one of the victims, Şervîn Serdar, in 2016 to express support in the common battle against the Islamic State.”

Şervîn Serdar was born in 1981 in the city of Dirbêsiyê. At the age of seventeen, she joined the Kurdish liberation movement in the guerrilla ranks. She returned from the mountains at the beginning of the Rojava revolution. Since then, she has been active in the defence of the region. Most recently, the commander took part in the "Operation Security Reinforcement" in Deir ez-Zor as a commander.

Masses attended the funeral for the YPJ commander in Dirbêsiyê to accompany her on her last journey to the Şehîd Rûstem Cûdî Cemetery of Martyrs on Sunday. Speaking at the funeral, YPJ commander Nesrîn Abdullah said: "The enemy is attacking us with all means, but the fascists should know that no matter how cruelly they attack, the will of a people who shed their blood for freedom cannot be broken." Abdullah promised that the YPJ would take revenge for those killed and intensify the fight.

It is part of Turkey's psychological warfare to make it impossible for the people in North-East Syria to live peacefully and, above all, to have any perspective of doing so, with the help of an "unseen" war of attrition. An essential element in this is unmanned combat drones, which, on the one hand, target representatives of the Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (AANES) structures and members of combat units, and on the other hand target the civilian population with the aim of driving them away. The USA and Russia, which control the airspace in northern and eastern Syria, ignore Turkish drone terror, as does the international community.

Turkey's drone war against AANES began in June 2020 with the murder of three representatives of the women's umbrella organisation Kongra Star in Kobanê. Since then, more than 200 further attacks have taken place. Since the beginning of this year alone, more than seventy people have been killed in over fifty drone attacks in North-East Syria, according to data from the independent media organisation Rojava Information Center (RIC). Fifteen of the victims were civilians, the others belonged to the Internal Security Forces and members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which continue to fight against ISIS and resist the Turkish occupation attacks.