Kurdish-led forces to withdraw from contested area in Syria

DEIR HAFER, Syria (AP) — The leader of Kurdish-led forces in Syria announced Friday that they will withdraw from a contested area in northern Syria, potentially heading off a major clash with government forces.

The announcement by Mazloum Abdi, the leader of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, came as the Syrian military announced it had begun striking SDF positions, while the SDF reported “intense artillery shelling” in the town of Deir Hafer east of the city of Aleppo.

Hours earlier, a U.S. military designation had visited Deir Hafer and met with SDF officials in an apparent attempt to tamp down tensions.

The U.S. has good relations with both sides and has urged calm. A spokesperson for the U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Abdi said in a statement posted on X that “based on calls from friendly countries and mediators and in a demonstration of good faith,” the SDF would redeploy its forces to areas east of the Euphrates River Saturday morning.

Shortly before Abdi’s announcement, interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa had announced issuance of a decree strengthening Kurdish rights.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of people carrying their belongings arrived in government-held areas in northern Syria ahead of the anticipated offensive by Syrian troops on territory held by Kurdish-led fighters.

Many of the civilians who fled were seen using side roads to reach government-held areas because the main highway was blocked at a checkpoint in the town of Deir Hafer controlled by the SDF.

The Syrian army said late Wednesday that civilians would be able to evacuate through the “humanitarian corridor” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and then extended the evacuation period another day, saying the SDF had stopped civilians from leaving.

There had been limited exchanges of fire between the two sides in the area before that.

Men, women and children arrived on the government side of the line in cars and pickup trucks that were packed with bags of clothes, mattresses and other belongings. They were met by local officials who directed them to shelters.

In other areas, people crossed canals on small boats and crossed a heavily damaged pedestrian bridge to reach the side held by government forces.

The SDF closed the main highway but more than 11,000 people were still able to reach government-held areas on other roads, Syrian state TV reported.

Abu Mohammed said he came from the town of Maskana after hearing the government had opened a safe corridor, “only to be surprised when we arrived at Deir Hafer and found it closed.”

SDF fighters were preventing people from crossing through Syria’s main east-west highway and forcing them to take a side road, he said.

Kortay Khalil, an SDF official at the Deir Hafer the checkpoint, said they had closed it because the government closed other crossings.

“This crossing was periodically closed even before these events, but people are leaving through other routes, and we are not preventing them,” he said. “If we wanted to prevent them, no one would be able to leave the area.”

The U.S. military convoy arrived in Deir Hafer in the early afternoon accompanied by SDF officials. Associated Press journalists saw SDF leaders and American officials enter one of the government buildings, where they met inside for more than an hour before departing the area.

Inside Deir Hafer, many shops were closed Friday and people stayed home.

The tensions in the Deir Hafer area come after several days of intense clashes last week in Aleppo, previously Syria’s largest city and commercial center, that ended with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters from three neighborhoods north of the city that were then taken over by government forces.

The fighting broke out as negotiations have stalled between Damascus and the SDF over an agreement reached in March to integrate their forces and for the central government to take control of institutions including border crossings and oil fields in the northeast.

The U.S. special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, posted on X on Friday that Washington remains in close contact with all parties in Syria, “working around the clock to lower the temperature, prevent escalation, and return to integration talks between the Syrian government and the SDF.”

The SDF for years has been the main U.S. partner in Syria in fighting against the Islamic State group, but Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with Kurdish separatist insurgents in Turkey. Some of the factions that now make up the Syrian army were formerly Turkish-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.

Al-Sharaa, the former leader of an Islamist rebel group that spearheaded the overthrow of former President Bashar Assad, has sought to win over Kurds and other minorities suspicious of his government, particularly after several outbreaks of sectarian violence last year.

On Friday, he issued a decree recognizing Kurdish as a national language along with Arabic and adopting the Newroz festival, a traditional celebration of spring and renewal marked by Kurds around the region, as an official holiday.

The decree also annulled measures resulting from a 1962 census in the northeastern al-Hasakeh province that stripped tens of thousands of Kurds of their citizenship, and announced that “Syrian citizenship is granted to all residents of Kurdish origin living in Syria, including those previously unregistered, with full equality in rights and duties.”

There was no immediate response by the SDF to the decree.