Renewed Clashes Between the Syrian Army and "SDF" East of Aleppo

SadaNews - The Syrian army and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced the renewal of clashes at night in the eastern regions of Aleppo city, as part of Damascus's efforts to fully assert control over the city's surroundings after regaining its main neighborhoods.

The Syrian official news agency "SANA" reported on Wednesday from a military source that the SDF targeted civilian homes and army positions around the village of Hamima in eastern Aleppo countryside using heavy machine guns and drones, noting that the army retaliated against the sources of fire.

In contrast, the Syrian Democratic Forces stated that their fighters repelled an infiltration attempt by government forces along the axis of the village of Zubaida in the southern Deir Hafer countryside, confirming that the attackers withdrew after the attempt failed, despite the use of drones and machine guns.

The Syrian army had demanded on Tuesday that the Kurdish forces withdraw from the areas located east of Aleppo city towards the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, declaring the area extending from east Aleppo to the Euphrates as a "closed military zone," and published a map identifying towns included in the withdrawal, including Maskanah and Deir Hafer.

The region witnessed the arrival of government military reinforcements, while both parties exchanged accusations of shelling and attempts at military advancement, amid warnings of a broader escalation that could threaten the fragile stability in northern Syria and undermine efforts to implement the agreement between them regarding the integration of self-administration institutions into the Syrian state.

The battles in the predominately Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh in Aleppo resulted in the deaths of 105 people according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, including 45 civilians and 60 fighters from both sides.

The head of civil defense operations in Aleppo, Faisal Muhammad, informed AFP that "more than 50 corpses have been removed from the neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh after the battles by civil defense," without specifying whether they were civilians or military personnel.

The Kurdish forces control vast areas in northern and eastern Syria, including the most prominent oil and gas fields. They have been at the forefront of the fight against the "ISIS" organization and managed to defeat it from its last strongholds in the country in 2019 with the support of the international coalition led by Washington.