Kurd women gunning for Bashar al-Assad's ouster

UNVEILED and barking orders at fierce-looking Kurdish men nearly twice her size, commander Engizek is a shocking sight within Syria's male-dominated rebel ranks.

A diminutive woman flanked by gun-toting loyalists, Engizek, who goes by a single name, leads dozens of Kurdish combatants in Aleppo city's embattled district of Sheik Maqsud, large parts of which were seized late last month from regime fighters.

"Women can shoot machineguns, Kalashnikovs and even tanks, just as well as men," said the 28-year-old. "Women are an integral part of our rebellion."

Fighters like Engizek - whose Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG) brigade is 20 per cent women - are the hidden face of Syria's rebellion against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The YPG, which recently joined forces with Syrian opposition rebels, is the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party, widely considered the Syrian offshoot of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party.

Kurds, who make up 15 per cent of Syria's population, had until now largely refrained from taking sides, but Kurdish militia are giving the rebels a boost to push back regime forces.

Last month they helped take the strategic Sheikh Maqsud neighbourhood on a hilltop north of Aleppo.

"We have the same goal as the rebel fighters," said Engizek. "It is to seek the ouster of Assad."

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