The deadliest clashes so far 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 U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces 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 SDF. 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 also said nine Aleppo Directorate of Agriculture employees were wounded by SDF shelling that hit its office.
The SDF in a statement denied being behind the shelling that killed the civilians and said a shell launched by “factions affiliated with the Damascus government” landed in the al-Midan neighborhood. The SDF claimed the target was 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.
Civilians caught in intense fighting
The SDF also said a drone strike launched by government forces 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.
At Aleppo's Al-Razi Hospital, which received some of the wounded, Ahmad Abu Sheikh was waiting to see his 4-year-old daughter, Fatima, who was on the operating table for hours after being hit by shrapnel from a shell. He said she lost her eye.
“I just want to know what can I tell my daughter when I see her? Where did her eye go?” he said.
Afrin Jawan, a civil society activist in Sheikh Maqsoud, said in a message that thousands of civilians were besieged in Kurdish neighborhoods "and subjected to indiscriminate shelling with all types of heavy and medium weapons ... by factions affiliated with the Ministry of Defense in Damascus.”
The predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Achrafieh in Aleppo have seen intermittent clashes in recent months. Previous rounds of fighting ended with truce agreements.
By Tuesday evening, a tense calm had returned, but clashes flared up again within hours.
Difficulty in absorbing Kurdish forces
The SDF has tens of thousands of fighters and is the main force to be absorbed into Syria’s military.
The leadership in Damascus under interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa signed a deal in March with the SDF, which controls much of the northeast, for it to merge with the Syrian army by the end of 2025. 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.
Officials from the central government and SDF met again Sunday in Damascus, but government officials said no tangible progress had been made.
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 main U.S. partner 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. A peace process is now underway.
The SDF and Syria's government have accused each other of seeking to derail the March agreement.
“The SDF organization once again proves that it does not recognize the March 10 Agreement and is trying to derail it and drag the army into an open battle of its choosing,” Syria's Defense Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.
The SDF said government forces had committed a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law” by targeting residential neighborhoods. It called the attacks "planned and deliberate, systematically targeting infrastructure and essential services, including water and electricity.”
