The powerful YPG militia has captured nearly all of east Ghwairan, the only major Arab neighbourhood still in government hands. Ankara also considers the YPG a terrorist organization because of its links to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
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Thursday’s government raids on Hasakeh were the first time the regime had bombarded Kurdish positions from the air.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a military source said the Kurds seized territory across several neighbourhoods in the city’s south in violent clashes on Saturday night.
In practice, the move is a dramatic escalation, and Cook’s arguing of semantics didn’t mean much of anything, as he spent the rest of the press briefing railing against the Syrian military for contesting control of Aleppo with al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, and insisted that the Kurds would continue to enjoy United States military support in the fighting.
The northeastern city has seen increasing ground clashes between the Kurdish YPG fighters and Syrian regime forces.
It accused the Asayish of igniting the violence through escalating “provocations”, including the bombing of army positions in Hasaka, and said the Asayish aimed to take control of the city.
Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, all roads into the city will be reopened and the two forces will exchange prisoners, the injured and bodies of those killed in the fighting, reported Syrian TV. Efforts by Kurdish forces on the ground to contact the Syrian jets were unsuccessful, he said.
Up to 300 U.S. Special Operations forces have been authorized by the White House to operate in northern Syria in support of Kurdish and Arab rebel groups fighting ISIS.
The military forces fighting for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including pro-government militias, will be allowed to leave.
Residents said thousands of civilians in the ethnically mixed city have fled to villages in the countryside as the fighting intensified.
Coalition and USA special operations forces were in the area at the time, but no one was affected by the airstrikes and they are safe, he added.
USA military officials reacted furiously last week after jets from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad targeted Kurdish forces and coalition advisers fighting Islamic State jihadists around the northeastern city of Hasakeh.
He said coalition aircraft were now carrying out additional combat patrols in the region.
Hassib said that he could hear USA aircraft as fighting between government troops and Kurdish fighters continued on the ground.
“A delegation of Russian officials and members of the (pro-regime militia) National Defence Forces (NDF) have arrived at Qamishli airport for a meeting tomorrow (Monday)”, a source from the Hasakeh governorate said.
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The Kurdish YPG militia holds wide areas of northern Syria, where its political allies have set up an autonomous government since Syria’s civil war began in 2011.
