On Aug. 18, U.S. jets were dispatched to intercept the Syrian attack planes that were attacking targets near Hasakah supporting regime forces fighting the Syrian Kurdish forces.
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The flare up came as Turkey yesterday said it will take a more active role in addressing the conflict in Syria in the next six months to prevent the war-torn country being divided along ethnic lines.
The YPG, known as the People’s Protection Units and which has ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party, appeared intent on leaving a nominal Syrian government presence confined to within a security zone in the heart of the city, where several key government buildings are located, Kurdish sources said.
The Syrian army deployed warplanes against the main armed Kurdish group for the first time during the war last week, prompting a USA -led coalition to scramble aircraft to protect American special operations ground forces.
When the bombing began, coalition forces on the ground tried to call the Syrian aircraft on a common radio channel, but there was no response, according to Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis.
Throughout the night and into Saturday morning, regime warplanes took to the skies above Hasakeh again, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group.
It was not immediately clear whether the aircraft had carried out any bombing runs as there were heavy artillery exchanges on the ground.
Mr Yildirim said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can remain temporarily during a transition period as “he is one of the actors today no matter whether we like it or not”.
In an indication of their reluctance to escalate further, pro-government media said on Saturday they had held preliminary peace talks.
Around two-thirds of Hasakeh is controlled by Kurdish forces, but the rest is in the hands of pro-government militia.
Davis said a small number of US commandos were in the area Thursday training and advising Syrian Democratic Forces.
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis on Friday said that the US has warned Syria that America will defend coalition troops. The Britain-based Observatory said Kurds advanced in Zuhur, while a Kurdish military source told AFP that they pushed forward in Al-Nashwa and Ghweiran.
In a follow on incident Friday, two U.S. F-22s intercepted Syrian aircraft “which attempted to transit the area and were met by coalition aircraft”, Karns said.
Thousands of civilians in the ethnically mixed city, including members of the Christian community, have fled to villages in the countryside as the fighting intensified, residents said.
A government source in Hasakeh said that the air strikes were “a message to the Kurds that they should stop this sort of demand”, after Kurds called for the dissolution of a pro-regime militia.
Washington regards the YPG as the most effective force against IS in Syria and has provided them with air support as well as the military advisers.
The close encounter highlights how crowded the airspace and battlefield have become in the five-year-old civil war in Syria, where both US and Russian forces are launching strikes with competing interests.
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Separately, two Russian ships in the Mediterranean launched long-range cruise missiles for the first time since December against jihadist targets in Syria on Friday, the Russian defence ministry said.
