ALEPPO, Syria: The United States on Saturday urged the Syrian government and Kurdish authorities to return to negotiations after days of deadly clashes in the northern city of Aleppo.
Conflicting reports emerged from the city, as authorities announced a halt to the fighting and said they began transferring Kurdish fighters out of Aleppo, but Kurdish forces denied the claims shortly after.
An AFP correspondent saw at least five buses on Saturday carrying men leaving the Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsud district accompanied by security forces, with authorities saying they were fighters though Kurdish forces insisted they were “civilians who were forcibly displaced.”
AFP could not independently verify the men’s identities.
Another correspondent saw at least six buses entering the neighborhood and leaving without anyone on board, with relative calm in the area.
It came as US envoy Tom Barrack on Saturday met with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, and afterwards issued a call for a “return to dialogue” with the Kurds in accordance with an integration agreement sealed last year.
The violence in Aleppo erupted after efforts to integrate the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and military into the country’s new government stalled.
Since the fighting began on Tuesday, at least 21 civilians have been killed, according to figures from both sides, while Aleppo’s governor said 155,000 people have been displaced.
On Saturday evening, state television reported that Kurdish fighters “who announced their surrender... were transported by bus to the city of Tabaqa” in the Kurdish-controlled northeast.
In a statement to the official SANA news agency, the military announced earlier on Saturday “a halt to all military operations in the Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood.”
A Syrian security source had told AFP that the last Kurdish fighters had entrenched themselves in the area of Al-Razi hospital in Sheikh Maqsud, before being evacuated by the authorities.
Kurdish forces said in a statement that news of fighters being transferred was “entirely false” and that the people taken included “young civilians who were abducted and transferred to an unknown location.”
- Residents waiting to return -
On the outskirts of Sheikh Maqsud, families who were unable to flee the violence were leaving, accompanied by Syrian security forces, according to an AFP correspondent.
Men were carrying their children on their backs as women and children wept, before boarding buses taking them to shelters.
Dozens of young men in civilian clothing were separated from the rest, with security forces making them sit on the ground, heads down, before being taken by bus to an unknown destination, according to the correspondent.
At the entrance to the district, 60-year-old resident Imad Al-Ahmad was waiting for permission from the security forces to return home.
“I left four days ago... I took refuge at my sister’s house,” he told AFP. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to return today.”
Nahed Mohammad Qassab, a 40-year-old widow also waiting to return, said she left before the fighting to attend a funeral.
“My three children are still inside, at my neighbor’s house. I want to get them out,” she said.
The clashes, some of the most intense since Syria’s new Islamist authorities took power, present yet another challenge as the country struggles to forge a new path after the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December 2024.
Both sides have blamed the other for starting the violence in Aleppo.
- ‘Fierce’ resistance -
In neighboring Iraq’s Kurdistan region, thousands of people had gathered on Saturday to protest against Damascus’ campaign in Aleppo.
They chanted slogans including “one united Kurdistan,” and “we are ready to extend a hand to the Kurds of Syria.”
A flight suspension at Aleppo airport was extended until late Saturday.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, much of which they captured during Syria’s civil war and the fight against the Daesh group.
But Turkiye, a close ally of neighboring Syria’s new leaders, views its main component as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which agreed last year to end its four-decade armed struggle against Ankara.
Turkiye has launched successive offensives to push Kurdish forces from the frontier.
Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast, accused Syrian authorities of “choosing the path of war” by attacking Kurdish districts and of “seeking to put an end to the agreements that have been reached.”
“We are committed to them and we are seeking to implement them,” she told AFP.
The March integration agreement was meant to be implemented last year, but differences, including Kurdish demands for decentralized rule, have stymied progress as Damascus repeatedly rejected the idea.
Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the renewed clashes cast doubt on the government’s ability to unite the country after years of civil war.
Syria’s authorities have committed to protecting minorities, but sectarian bloodshed rocked the Alawite and Druze communities last year.
