New deadly clashes between Syrian forces and Kurdish fighters in Aleppo
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Renewed clashes broke out Tuesday between Syrian government forces and Kurdish fighters in a contested area of the northern city of Aleppo, as efforts to merge the fighters with the national army have shown little progress.
Syria ’s state-run SANA news agency said a soldier was killed and three others were wounded in an attack by the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. State TV later reported that three civilians, including two women, were killed and others were wounded, including two children, in shelling of a residential area that it blamed on the SDF.
SANA said nine employees of the Aleppo Directorate of Agriculture were wounded by SDF shelling that hit its office.
The SDF in a statement denied being behind the shelling that killed the civilians and asserted instead that a shell launched by “factions affiliated with the Damascus government” landed in the al-Midan neighborhood. The SDF claimed the target had been the adjacent Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood.
“This indiscriminate shelling constitutes a direct attack on residential areas and exposes the lives of civilians to grave danger,” it said.
The SDF also said a drone strike launched by government forces had killed one resident of Sheikh Maqsoud and wounded two children, and that shelling in the nearby Bani Zaid neighborhood killed a woman and wounded dozens. There was no mention of those incidents in state media.
There have been intermittent clashes in the predominantly Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud and Achrafieh neighborhoods of Aleppo in recent months.
The leadership in Damascus under interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa signed a deal in March with the SDF, which controls much of the northeast. The SDF was to merge with the Syrian army by the end of 2025, but there have been disagreements on how it would happen. In April, scores of SDF fighters left Sheikh Maqsoud and Achrafieh as part of the deal with Damascus.
Officials from the central government and SDF met again Sunday in Damascus, but government officials said no “tangible progress” had been made. The SDF has tens of thousands of fighters and is the main force to be absorbed into Syria’s military.
Some of the factions that make up the new Syrian army, formed after the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive in December 2024, were previously Turkish-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.
The SDF for years has been the primary partner of the U.S. in Syria in fighting against the Islamic State group, but Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a long-running insurgency in Turkey, although a peace process is now underway.