The Kurdish-led autonomous administration in northeast Syria announced a lockdown in the broad swath of territory under its control today, just hours after the Syrian government confirmed its first case of the coronavirus.
The autonomous administration has declared a two-week curfew. It said in a statement this could be extended “in case of necessity and the public interest.” The administration said no cases of COVID-19 had been detected in the northeast so far. The area lying east of the Euphrates bordering Turkey to the north and Iraq to the east is home to between 4 million to 5 million people, among them hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians and Islamic State prisoners.
