Video - Female YPJ Fighter Speaks about Liberation of Shuyukh

Syria - Kurdish People’s Defense Units forms another female brigade in Afrin

Syria - Kurdish People’s Defense Units forms another female brigade in Afrin.(Firat).

Women's Defense Units (YPJ) affiliated to People’s Defense Units (YPG) in western Kurdistan have formed another brigade named “Gulê Selmo”.

The formation of the new female brigade was announced with a military ceremony in the city of Afrin on Tuesday.

Speaking at the ceremony, YPJ Commander Jinda Efrini said that they have formed the new brigade in response to the armed groups that have massacred women and committed savage crimes against them under the guise of Islam in the villages of Til Aran and Til Hasıl in Aleppo region.

The Kurdish People Protection Units were set up last July, when the Kurdistan West Democratic Movement (TEV-DEM) –the umbrella body of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the main party among the Syrian Kurds, and other organizations close to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)–, took control of some areas of northern Syria as well as Aleppo´s predominantly Kurdish districts of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh.

Although most of the Kurdish militia is made up women and men of Kurdish origin, it´s not infrequent to find fighters of different ethnicities and religions among their ranks.

In Qamishlo –680 kilometers northeast of Damascus– there is a significant number of Christian combatants within the YPG and the enlistment of young Arabs men in Aleppo has also increased since last year.

There are also cases of young Arabs from other parts of the city that have decided to join the Kurdish militia because they are disappointed with FSA´s attitude.

Syria - Syrian Kurdish women set up all female battalion.

Syria - Syrian Kurdish women set up all female battalion.(AA).Around 150 Kurdish women in the war-wracked northern Syrian province of Aleppo have set up a fighting battalion, a monitoring group said on Saturday.
“The Kurdish popular committees have set up the first women’s battalion, comprising some 150 women fighters. The battalion is named the Martyr Rokan Battalion,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“While women are now fighting alongside the oppsition fighters, pro-regime forces and Kurdish militia, this is the first women’s battalion as such,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.
The Observatory circulated an amateur photograph of the battalion, showing scores of members in military fatigues, standing in rows before their female leadership.
“Women are now playing a major role in the fighting in Syria,” Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The women’s battalion was announced in Ifrin, the scene in late 2012 of violence pitting Kurdish fighters against Arab opposition groups fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Assad’s troops pulled out from majority Kurdish areas in 2012, and while Kurds have been split over the anti-regime revolt in Syria, most have chosen to remain neutral in the conflict.
An agreement in Ras al-Ain on the Turkish border last week brought an end to fighting between Kurds and Islamists, though some activists have described the agreement brokered by a prominent Christian dissident as fragile.
The announcement of the Kurdish women’s battalion comes a month after pro-regime forces set up the National Defense Forces, a paramilitary unit in which women of all ages have been asked to volunteer.Read the full story here, more here from Russia Today.