Pro-Turkey Syria forces detain journalist working for AFP: monitor

A Syrian journalist working for several media outlets including AFP in an area of the country's north controlled by Turkey-backed rebel factions has been detained by local authorities, a war monitor said Tuesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the reasons for journalist Bakr al-Kassem's detention by local "military police" were unknown.

Kassem's wife Nabiha Taha, who is also a journalist, told AFP she and her husband were detained on Monday in the city of Al-Bab where they live, near the border with Turkey, as they returned by car from covering an event.

Taha said she was released a short time later but Kassem was still detained, adding that she did not know "the reason for his arrest nor the place where he is being held".

She said their telephones were seized and their house was searched, with Kassem's computer and cameras also confiscated.

The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, said Kassem was arrested by "Turkish intelligence and (local) military police" and was "beaten".

Abdurrahman Mustafa, head of the Syrian interim government which administers the area, told AFP he was unaware of Kassem's detention.

Kassem has worked for AFP since 2019, covering Syria's civil war as well as a deadly February 2023 earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria and in which he lost 17 family members.

He has also worked for Turkey's official Anadolu news agency and local Syrian media outlets.

"We call on the local authorities in northern Syria to immediately release our correspondent Bakr al-Kassem and allow him to return to work freely," said AFP's global editor-in-chief Sophie Huet.

Syria's war began after the repression of anti-government protests in 2011 and spiralled into a complex conflict drawing in foreign armies and jihadists, killing more than 500,000 people and displacing millions.

Turkish troops and Turkey-backed rebel factions control swathes of northern Syria, and Ankara has launched successive cross-border offensives since 2016.