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By Feras Dalatey
LONDON, May 6 (Reuters) – Syrian forces have arrested Uzbek fighters during a security sweep in the northwest, after a dispute involving one of them escalated into protests outside a government security facility, two Syrian security officials said.
The tensions began after authorities sought to detain an Uzbek fighter accused of opening fire in Idlib city, prompting demonstrations by armed Uzbek fighters demanding his release, according to the officials and locals.
The Syrian Ministry of the Interior did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
The incident underscores a delicate challenge facing Syria’s Islamist-led government as it attempts to exert state authority over foreign jihadists who came to Syria to fight in the civil war after 2011. Many of them fought alongside or as part of the jihadist group led by President Ahmed al Sharaa, who cut ties with al Qaeda in 2016.
Security forces carried out arrests in several areas of Idlib countryside, including the towns of Kafriya and al-Foua, targeting Uzbek fighters who participated in the protest, locals and officials said. Military reinforcements and convoys were deployed around Kafriya and al-Foua towns in Idlib province, where sporadic gunfire was heard.
It was not immediately clear how many of the Uzbek fighters had been arrested.
A Syrian security source told Reuters last year there were around 1,500 Uzbek fighters in Syria, some with families.
It marks the second confrontation in recent months between Syrian government forces and foreign militants in Idlib, after tensions surrounding a camp led by French jihadist Omar Diaby, known as Omar Omsen, near the Turkish border last October.
The Syrian government has sought to formalize the status of many of the foreign fighters, bringing thousands of them into the structure of the new Syrian army. Some have assumed senior state roles – a Jordanian commands the Republican Guard tasked with protecting the president, and an Australian heads the newly established sovereign fund.
Reuters reported last year that the United States had given its blessing to a Syrian plan to integrate around 3,500 foreign fighters, mainly Uyghurs from China and neighbouring countries, into a newly formed army division, arguing that bringing them under state control was preferable to leaving them outside official structures.
Sharaa has built close ties to the United States over the last year, and Damascus joined a U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in November.
(Reporting by Feras Dalatey in London, Editing by Tom Perry and Alex Richardson)
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