The army enters the city of Deir Hafer in governorate of Aleppo and begins to comb neighbourhoods after the SDF withdrawal.
The Syrian army is preparing to take control of areas previously held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The forces on Saturday entered the city of Deir Hafer in the governorate of Aleppo and began combing the neighbourhoods after the SDF withdrawal.
On Friday night, the Syrian army launched an operation against the Kurdish fighters in Deir Hafer, located some 50km (30 miles) east of the city of Aleppo, ordering Kurdish fighters to leave the area.
media’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Zaalanah, just east of Aleppo on the way to Deir Hafer, said the Syrian forces, who were building up around Deir Hafer for days, have started entering the town with the first hours of the morning.
“And what we are likely to see in the next hours and days are the clearing operations,” he said.
“In many ways, this is really a best-case scenario – a short, sharp military operation overnight and then in daylight hours securing that agreement for a withdrawal from the SDF and then now moving in to try to clear the area,” Basravi added.
There were violent clashes between the army and the SDF in Aleppo on Friday, with the army saying it would focus on areas that Kurdish forces were using “as a launching point for their terrorist operations towards the city of Aleppo and its eastern countryside”.
SDF leader Mazloum Abdi (also known as Mazloum Kobani) said in response that his forces would withdraw to the east of the Euphrates River.
In a post on X, Abdi said that “based on calls from friendly countries and mediators … we have decided to withdraw our forces tomorrow morning at 7am [04:00 GMT]” east of Aleppo “towards redeployment in areas east of the Euphrates”.
Abdi said he was withdrawing fighters “in demonstration of … our commitment to implementing the provisions of the March 10th agreement”, referring to stalled plans to integrate the Kurdish de facto autonomous administration into the Syrian state.
Delays with implementation of the deal, which was supposed to see the Kurdish-led SDF integrating with the Syrian Ministry of Defence by the end of 2025, led to fierce clashes in Aleppo this month that left at least 23 people dead, according to Syria’s Ministry of Health.
As Syrian forces advanced, more than 150,000 fled two pockets of the city that the SDF, which controls swaths of Syria’s oil-rich north and northeast, had held since the early days of Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011.
By Sunday, Syrian troops had taken full control of Aleppo.
Friday’s attack came despite a meeting between a delegation of the United States-led coalition and Kurdish forces seeking to ease tensions.
At least 4,000 people left the Deir Hafer area on Friday after the army issued a deadline to flee, according to Syrian authorities.
Goodwill gesture
The Syrian government has been seeking to extend its authority nationwide following the removal of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
In an apparent gesture of goodwill following the fighting in Aleppo, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree on Friday declaring Kurdish a “national language”.
The decree, the first formal recognition of Kurdish rights since independence in 1946, declares the minority “an essential and integral part” of Syria, where they have suffered decades of marginalisation and oppression.
Al-Sharaa also made Nowruz, the Kurdish new year falling on March 21, an official holiday and granted nationality to Kurds, as 20 percent had been stripped of it under a controversial 1962 census.
In a televised address announcing the decree, al-Sharaa urged Kurds to “actively participate in building this nation”, promising to “guarantee” their rights.
