Syrian forces enter northern towns after Kurdish fighters withdraw
- Last updated: January 17, 2026 | 22:41 ..
Syrian troops swept through towns in the country's north on Saturday after an agreed withdrawal by Kurdish fighters there, but clashes erupted when the army kept up its advance deeper into Kurdish-held territory.
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 on Saturday, 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.
Syrian troops moved relatively smoothly into the main town of Deir Hafer and surrounding villages whose residents are predominantly Arab, according to statements from the military.
Some residents had left in recent days through a humanitarian corridor set up by Syria's army but those who stayed celebrated the army's arrival. "It happened with the least amount of losses. There's been enough blood in this country, Syria. We have sacrificed and lost enough - people are tired of it," Hussein Al Khalaf, a resident of Deir Hafer, told Reuters.
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 on Saturday 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 on Saturday to meet Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi, a source in the presidency of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region told AFP.
The United States for years has supported the Kurds but also backs Syria's new authorities.
The US Central Command on Saturday urged "Syrian government forces to cease any offensive actions in the areas between Aleppo and Al Tabqa," in a post on X.
France's President Emmanuel Macron and the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, called for deescalation and a ceasefire, the French presidency said.
Sharaa's announcement on Friday was the first formal recognition of Kurdish rights since Syria's independence in 1946.
The decree stated that Kurds are "an essential and integral part" of Syria, where they have suffered decades of marginalisation and oppression under former rulers.
It made Kurdish a "national language" and granted nationality to all Kurds, 20 percent of whom had been stripped of it under a controversial 1962 census.
In Qamishli, the main Kurdish city in the country's northeast, Shebal Ali, 35, told AFP that "we want constitutional recognition of the Kurdish people's rights."
Yara, 42, a Kurdish artist in Damascus who declined to provide her full name, said the government needed to "provide guarantees to earn the Kurds' confidence."
Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, told AFP that the decree "offers cultural concessions while consolidating military control."
"It does not address the northeast's calls for self-governance," he told AFP, adding that "Sharaa is comfortable granting cultural rights, but draws the line at power-sharing."
He said Damascus appeared to be seeking "to drive a wedge between Kurdish civilians and the armed forces that have governed them for a decade."
Agencies