Syria govt forces take control of Aleppo’s Kurdish neighbourhoods

Syria's government was in full control of Aleppo on January 11, after taking over the city's Kurdish neighbourhoods and evacuating fighters. Photo / Delil Souleiman, AFP

Syria’s Government was in full control of Aleppo on Sunday after taking over the city’s Kurdish neighbourhoods and evacuating fighters there to Kurdish autonomous areas following days of deadly clashes.

Residents of the Ashrafiyeh neighbourhood, the first of two areas to fall to the Syrian army, began returning to their homes to inspect the damage, finding shrapnel and broken glass littering the streets.

The violence started after negotiations stalled on integrating the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and forces into the country’s new Government.

A Syrian security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that 419 Kurdish fighters, including 59 wounded and an unspecified number of dead, were transferred from the Sheikh Maqsud neighbourhood – the second area to come under army control – to the Kurdish-controlled zone in the northeast.

The arriving fighters were met with tears and vows of vengeance from hundreds of people who gathered to greet them in the northeastern Kurdish city of Qamishli, according to AFP correspondents at the scene.

“We will avenge Sheikh Maqsud ... we will avenge our fighters, we will avenge our martyrs,” Umm Dalil, 55, said.

A correspondent saw crossed-out images of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and US envoy Tom Barrack, as people chanted against Sharaa.

Kurdish leader Mazlum Abdi said on X that the combatants were evacuated “through the mediation of international parties to stop the attacks and violations against our people in Aleppo”.

The Syrian official said that 300 other Kurds, including fighters and members of the domestic security forces, had been arrested.

Britain-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that 300 “young Kurds” had been arrested, stating that they were “civilians, not fighters”.

Damaged walls, looted homes

On Sunday in Ashrafiyeh, an AFP correspondent saw people carrying bags and blankets return to their homes after being searched by security forces.

Yahya al-Sufi, a 49-year-old clothing seller, told AFP he had fled during the violence.

“When we returned, we found holes in the walls and our homes had been looted ... Now that things have calmed down, we’re back to repair the walls and restore the water and electricity,” he said.

Some had hoped calm would prevail between the government in Damascus and the Kurdish fighters.

“We didn’t want things to get this bad. I wish the Kurdish leadership had responded to the Syrian state. We’ve had enough bloodshed,” said Mohammed Bitar, 39, who stayed in the Ashrafieh neighbourhood.

“There’s no Arab, no Kurd, we’re all Syrians.”

Sheikh Maqsud, however, remained off limits on Sunday, with residents barred from returning, an interior ministry source told AFP.

An AFP correspondent in the area saw burnt armoured vehicles, cars loaded with ammunition and many landmines authorities took during their combing operation.

Syrian authorities said on Sunday that the toll from the fighting had reached “24 dead and 129 wounded since last Tuesday”, while the Observatory reported 45 civilians and 60 soldiers and fighters were killed from both sides.

The Observatory reported “field executions” and the burning of fighters’ bodies in Sheikh Maqsud by government forces, with other “violations”, but AFP was unable to independently verify the claims.

Return to dialogue

US envoy Tom Barrack met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Saturday, and afterwards issued a call for a “return to dialogue” with the Kurds in accordance with an integration agreement sealed last year.

Abdi, in his statement, called on “the mediators to abide by their promises to stop the violations”.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which Abdi heads, 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 Islamic State group.

Neighbouring Turkey, a close ally of Syria’s new leaders, views the SDF’s main component as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which agreed last year to end its four-decade armed struggle against Ankara.

Turkey has launched successive offensives to push Kurdish forces from the frontier.

The March integration agreement between Damascus and the Kurds was meant to be implemented last year, but differences, including Kurdish demands for decentralised rule, stymied progress.

The Aleppo fighting recalled a chapter in Syria’s civil war when fierce fighting pitted the city’s rebel-held east against the west, then controlled by the forces of ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

Assad’s forces seized control of the entire city in December 2016, forcing the opposition and their families to evacuate to what was then the rebel stronghold of Idlib in the northwest.

-Agence France-Presse