Syrian government forces enter towns in north after Kurdish fighters withdraw

Two soldiers said killed in latest clash as Damascus and Kurdish-led SDF trade blame for violating agreement that followed deadly fighting in Aleppo

DEIR HAFER, Syria (AP) — Syrian government forces entered two northern towns Saturday morning after the command of Kurdish-led fighters said it would evacuate the area in an apparent move to avoid conflict.

Two soldiers were killed and others wounded in the latest clash, state media reported. The town of Deir Hafer changed hands after deadly fighting erupted earlier this month between government troops and the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest. It ended with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters from three neighborhoods taken over by government forces.

An Associated Press reporter on Saturday saw government tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles, including pickup trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on top, entering Deir Hafer after bulldozers removed barriers. There was no SDF presence on the edge of the town.

The Syrian military said its forces were in full control of Deir Hafer, captured the Jarrah air base to the east, and were in the process of clearing mines and explosives. It added that troops would move toward the nearby town of Maskana, where an AP reporter saw a military convoy rolling in hours later.

The SDF said in a statement that according to an agreement, Syrian forces were supposed to enter Deir Hafer and Maskana after the Kurdish-led force ended their withdrawal.

“Damascus violated the terms of the agreement and entered the towns before our fighters had fully withdrawn, creating a highly dangerous situation with potentially serious repercussions,” the SDF said.

State news agency SANA reported that SDF fighters “violated the agreement” by targeting an army patrol near Maskana, leaving two soldiers dead and others wounded. SANA added that government forces kept moving east, reaching two villages in the northern province of Raqqa.

Over the past two days, more than 11,000 people fled Deir Hafer and Maskana using side roads to reach government-controlled areas, after the government announced an offensive to take the towns.

On Friday night, after government forces started pounding SDF positions in Deir Hafer, the Kurdish-led fighters’ top commander Mazloum Abdi posted on X that his group would withdraw from contested areas in northern Syria. Abdi said SDF fighters would relocate east of the Euphrates River starting at 7 a.m. Saturday.

The easing of tension came after US military officials visited Deir Hafer on Friday and held talks with SDF officials in the area. The United States has good relations with both sides and has urged calm.

Abdi was scheduled to hold talks with the US special special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil on Saturday.

The SDF’s decision to withdraw from Deir Hafer was made after Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree Friday boosting the rights of the country’s Kurds, who made up about 10 percent of Syria’s population of 23 million before the conflict began in 2011. Over the past decades, Syria’s Kurds had been marginalized and deprived of their cultural rights under the rule of the Baath Party that ran Syria for six decades until Bashar Assad’s fall in December 2024.

Al-Sharaa’s decree recognized Kurdish as a national language, along with Arabic, and adopted the Newroz festival, a traditional celebration of spring and renewal marked by Kurds around the region, as an official holiday.

The Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria said Saturday that the rights of Kurds should not be protected by “temporary decrees” but by mentioning them in the country’s constitution. It added that a decree “does not form a real guarantee for rights of Syria’s ethnic groups.”