Active April 2014 — present | ||
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Groups Euphrates BrigadesJund al-Haramayn BrigadeEuphrates Martyrs BrigadeDam Martyrs BrigadeAl-Qusais BrigadeManbij Turkmen Brigade Leaders Brig. Gen. Mohammed Hammou (first commander)Abu Layla (DOW) (leading commander 2015-16)Mohammad Abu Adel (general commander since 2016)Adnan Abu-Amjad (second-in-command)Adnan al-Ahmad (commander-in-chief in Hasakah Governorate)Raizan Abu Muhammad (commander)Gaddafi Abu Ali Jreikh † (Dam Martyrs Brigade commander) Area of operations Aleppo GovernorateRaqqa GovernorateHasakah Governorate | ||
The Northern Sun Battalion (Arabic: كتائب شمس الشمال, Kata'eb Shams ash-Shamal) is an armed rebel group affiliated with the Free Syrian Army that has been active during the Syrian Civil War.
Contents
History
The formation of the Northern Sun Battalion was announced by a defected Syrian Armed Forces brigadier general Mohammed Hammou in the Manbij countryside on 16 April 2014. Less than a week later, several other small groups and individuals joined the battalion, including Abu Layla from Jabhat al-Akrad.
The Northern Sun Battalion, formerly main constituent of the Dawn of Freedom Brigades, on 3 May 2015 formed the Army of Revolutionaries together with Jabhat al-Akrad, former Hazzm Movement and Syria Revolutionaries Front affiliates, and smaller FSA groups.
In October 2015 it became part of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Subsequently, the Dawn of Freedom Brigades went defunct.
In November, the battalion participated in the Syrian Democratic Force's al-Hawl offensive, and according to commander-in-chief Adnan al-Ahmad is committed to pushing ISIL out of al-Shaddadah and Raqqa, as well as from Jarablus, the Tishrin Dam and Manbij.
When the Manbij Military Council was set up on 3 April 2016, the battalion's second-in-command, Adnan Abu-Amjad, was made the council's general commander. In course of the following Manbij offensive, one of the Northern Sun Battalion's most prominent commanders was killed: Abu Layla died on the 5th of June 2016, after being shot in the head by an Islamic State sniper on Friday June third, in the countryside south of Manbij, Syria. He had previously been evacuated by a US military helicopter to a hospital in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan, but doctors were unable to remove a bullet to the head and prevent internal bleeding to the brain.
Additional groups that joined
War crimes
On 15 March 2017, a video surfaced that showed members of the Northern Sun Battalion torturing an ISIL fighter, who had been captured while planting mines. One of these mines had killed nine fighters of the battalion, leading five others to take revenge on the ISIL militant. The Manbij Military Council condemned the act, and announced that the involved Northern Sun Battalion fighters would be held for trial for violenting the Geneva Conventions. The five accused were subsequently arrested on 17 March.