Syria’s army took control of swathes of northern Syria and threatened to bomb parts of Raqa province yesterday after Kurdish forces pulled back from territory they had held for over a decade.
The government appeared to be seeking to extend its grip on parts of the country under Kurdish control a day after President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree declaring Kurdish a "national language” and granting the minority official recognition.
The Kurds have said the move fell short of their aspirations.
The army drove Kurdish forces from two Aleppo neighbourhoods last week and took control of an area east of the city yesterday, after implementation stalled on a March deal that was supposed to see Kurdish forces integrated into the state.
Authorities later announced they had seized two oil fields near the city of Tabqa in Raqa province.
An AFP correspondent in Deir Hafer, some 50 kilometres east of Aleppo city, saw several fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) leaving the town and residents returning under heavy army presence.
Syria’s army said four soldiers had been killed, while Kurdish forces reported several fighters dead, as both sides traded blame for violating the withdrawal deal.
Kurdish authorities ordered a curfew in the Raqa region after the army designated a swathe of territory southwest of the Euphrates River a "closed military zone” and warned it would target what it said were several military sites.
SDF chief Mazloum Abdi on Friday had committed to redeploying his forces from outside Aleppo to east of the Euphrates.
But the SDF said yesterday that Damascus "violated the recent agreements and betrayed our forces during the implementation of the withdrawal provisions”.
It said Kurdish forces were clashing with troops in an area south of Tabqa, "which was outside the scope of the agreement”.
The army meanwhile urged the SDF leadership to "immediately fulfil its announced commitments and fully withdraw to the east of the Euphrates River”.
The SDF controls swathes of Syria’s oil-rich north and northeast, much of which it captured during the country’s civil war and the fight against the Islamic State group over the past decade.
US envoy Tom Barrack was in Erbil yesterday to meet Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi, a source in the presidency of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region told AFP.
The US for years has supported the Kurds but also backs Syria’s new authorities. The US Central Command yesterday urged "Syrian government forces to cease any offensive actions in the areas between Aleppo and Al-Tabqa”, in a post on X.