The Kurdish folk artist Mohammad Ali Hassan Habib, a native of the city of Afrin, was killed after sustaining shrapnel injuries as a result of shelling that targeted the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in the city of Aleppo, on Saturday, 10 January 2026. His body was later escorted and buried in the countryside of Afrin on 12 January 2026.
According to the available information, the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood was subjected to shelling carried out by the forces of the Syrian interim authority on Saturday, 10 January 2026, which resulted in the injury of the artist Mohammad Ali Hassan Habib by shrapnel, leading to his death later as a result of his wounds.
Local sources reported that security elements carried out, on Sunday, 11 January 2026, the arrest of two members of the victim’s family while his body was being transported to the town of Bulbul in the Afrin countryside. The arrest took place at the al-Awarid checkpoint at the entrance to the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood.
The detainees are: Qasim Mohammad Habib, the victim’s son, and Ramadan Hasko, the victim’s son-in-law.
In a related context, on Sunday, 12 January 2026, “Rights Monitor” obtained a preliminary list that includes the names of 272 missing persons from among the residents of the Sheikh Maqsoud and al-Ashrafieh neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo, two neighborhoods with a Kurdish majority. This comes following security and military events that the two neighborhoods witnessed in recent days.
These developments coincided with consistent information indicating the commission of serious violations against Kurdish civilians and fighters in the two neighborhoods by armed groups affiliated with the interim authority represented by “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham,” within the framework of a wide-scale military and security campaign.
In the same context, the Kurdish Red Crescent announced the arrest of three of its members in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood: Rami Hussein al-Ali, an employee in the prosthetics department; Abdul Rahman Mohammad, a paramedic who was carrying out his humanitarian duties in transporting the injured and wounded; in addition to Yusuf Hanan Hamouko, an ambulance driver with the Kurdish Red Crescent.
The Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood witnessed, on Saturday, 10 January 2026, a notable military escalation that included intense shelling, followed by the implementation of a wide arrest campaign that affected hundreds of civilians, especially men from among the neighborhood’s residents, carried out by forces affiliated with the interim authority. The repercussions of these operations also extended to the neighboring al-Ashrafieh neighborhood, where the disappearance of a large number of people was recorded under similar circumstances.
The available data indicate that the majority of the missing persons are Kurdish civilians residing in the Sheikh Maqsoud and al-Ashrafieh neighborhoods, amid the absence of confirmed information regarding their fate or places of detention, and the lack of any known legal procedures or official announcements related to their status to date.
