TWO female Kurdish politicians have been beheaded after being kidnapped by jihadists in Syria’s Heseke province in a blood-soaked weekend of violence in the semi-autonomous region.

The decapitated bodies of co-president of the Til ShayIir People’s Council Saeda al-Harmoush and co-chair of the economy committee Hind al-Khadir were found by the roadside close to the centre of Al-Dashisha on Saturday.

The pair had been abducted from their homes on Friday by at least eight heavily armed men, according to reports from neighbours.

Their headless bodies were dumped in the city in what has been described as a warning and an attempt to intimidate others.

No group has claimed responsibility for the gruesome executions, but the pair had been threatened by Isis in the weeks leading up to the beheadings.

It is known that jihadist sleeper cells are operating in the area, reorganising under the shadow of Turkish air strikes:  a senior Isis commander was captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the province earlier this month.

Women have been particularly targeted in the semi-autonomous region of northern Syria known as Rojava, where they play a high-profile role in political life and have fought on the front line against the jihadist death cult, which was defeated in 2017.

In one of the most brutal attacks that followed Turkey’s illegal invasion and occupation of Afrin, the western canton of Rojava, in 2018’s so-called Operation Olive Branch, Future Syria Party leader Hevrin Khalaf was dragged from her car, tortured and executed by jihadists in October 2019.

Calls have been made for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to be charged with war crimes for the attack, which was carried out by the Ankara-backed Ahrar al-Sharqiya militia, which had been fighting alongside Turkish forces.

The Morning Star has previously reported that more than a thousand women have been kidnapped by jihadists, with many trafficked to Libya via Turkey, where they are kept as sex slaves. 

Kurdish officials have drawn comparisons with the Yazidi genocide, in which more than 3,000 women and girls remain missing after being captured and sold by Isis fighters.

The bloody weekend was also marked by a Turkish mortar attack on civilians in Til Rifat in the northern Aleppo governorate. Two children, five-year-old Majid Yasser Sikran and 12-year-old Nazliye Mihemed Mustafa, were among at least four people killed in the Saturday evening attack. Many more were injured.