ABU KHASHAB, Syria — As assassinations of local officials continued in parts of Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor under the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the civil council chief of the Arab-majority governorate called for greater unity among the Arab population and urged that imbalances between the region and its mixed and Kurdish counterparts further north be addressed.

On Dec. 22, one local official was killed by a bomb in his car; another was shot and killed in his home in the governorate less than a week later on Dec. 28. Both major and minor tribal figures have also been targeted.

In an extended interview on Dec. 16 with Al-Monitor in Abu Khashab, a town in eastern Deir ez-Zor administratively part of the Al-Kasrah district, Deir ez-Zor civil council chief Ghassan al-Youssef stressed that “we have seen a large number of local officials killed in Deir ez-Zor in recent months.”

A local official in Al-Tayyana, “a lawyer by profession,” Youssef said, had been killed three months before. Khaled Khalif al-Hamadi, head of the oil authority of the civil council, was assassinated by men who opened fire on his car in late October.