In the evening of Thursday, 5th September 2024, five civilians who had been earlier displaced from Afrin, including at least three women and a girl, were injured in the residential areas of the city of Tal Rifaat in the northern countryside of Aleppo, Syria, as a result of heavy gunfire allegedly perpetrated by the Turkish military.

The injured civilians were named by Hawar News, the Afrin Human Rights Organization, and Xeber24 News as: a woman named Zainab Ali Musa (55 years old) and a girl named Noura Mamed Hamdoush (16 years old) from the town of Kafr Jannah in the municipality of Sharan, and three civilians from the village of Qastal Muqdad in the municipality of Bulbul – two women, Houriya Muhammad Waqfi (41 years old) and Roshin Othman, and a man Muhammad Luqman Hasso. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights mentioned that four women had been injured in the attack, therefore a maximum civilian injury toll of six has been recorded.

The civilians were reportedly injured with varying degrees of severity and were taken to the hospital for treatment.

The incident was reported by the Afrin Human Rights Organization and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and by news outlets, including Hawar News, amongst others. Hawar News shared two anonymized pictures of the shrapnel wounds inflicted on the victims.

Where sources identified the belligerent, all sources attributed the attack to the Turkish military. According to Hawar News, the belligerent reportedly used “Dushka” anti-aircraft machine guns.