Turkey has arrested at least 75 people, including five women, and continued massive tree cutting in Syria’s north-western Turkish-occupied Kurdish district of Afrin in September, according to a recent human rights violations report.

Two people are also known to have been killed in northern Syria in the same month, including a girl who died in the Turkish bombardment of the countryside north of Aleppo, the North Press Agency said citing the same report.

The Human Rights Organisation-Afrin, who prepared the report, said that more than 19,000 trees had been chopped down in different areas of Afrin, while more than 17,000 trees belonging to residents of nearby villages had been seized by Turkish-backed Syrian rebels. The organisation also accused Syrian fighters of burning forests in two districts.

After Turkey took control of Afrin city in 2018 through a military offensive carried out together with Syrian rebel groups, an estimated 300,000 Kurds fled Afrin, and Turkey started settling internally displaced Arabs and Turkmens into the territory.

Turkey and its allied Syrian militia have been repeatedly accused of human rights violations in Afrin and also massive tree cutting, which is causing clearly observable environmental destruction in the region.