TEHRAN (Defapress) - An armed group affiliated with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham set fire to a Christmas tree in the square of the town of Suqaylabiyah in the Hama countryside on the eve of the birth of Jesus Christ. When people came to the town square to put out the fire, the armed men pointed their guns at them, which caused fear and severe tension in the city.
But the story did not end there, the residents of Suqaylabiyah held angry demonstrations in protest of this act of armed rebels, who were foreign nationals and mostly Uzbeks, and considered this act by the rebels to be a violation of Abu Muhammad al-Julani's alleged freedom of belief.
It got to the point where Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, through its media arms, tried to blame the remnants of the former regime for this crime, but the residents of the area, who had filmed it with their mobile phones, thwarted this attempt and showed that the perpetrators of the fire were Tahrir al-Sham armed men of foreign nationality, mostly Uzbeks.
The Rai al-Youm newspaper, publishing this report, quoted a resident of the city as saying: A convoy of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham vehicles with people wearing military uniforms and speaking fluent Arabic arrived at the city square. First, they broke several branches of the Christmas tree with machetes and then set it on fire. They then pointed their weapons at civilians who tried to prevent the tree from being burned.
In the incident of Suqaylabiyah and the burning of the Christmas tree, Tahrir al-Sham was finally forced to admit that its forces had carried out this act, so it went on to announce that it would hold the perpetrators of the fire accountable.