Syria’s military said a truce deal has been reached with the Kurds in Hasakeh, but a Kurdish source said it has yet to be finalised.
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The US has its trooped embedded with the Kurdish forces, and argued that the Syrian airstrikes were endangering them.
Turkey is now allowing a rebel Syrian force under the banner of the Free Syrian Army to assemble on its soil for an attack on an ISIS-held town, seeking to deny control to the YPG.
Mohammed Za’al Ali, the governor of Hasaka, said that Kurdish fighters intend to push out government forces from strategic points of the Kurdish-majority city.
Late last week the USA sent fighters to warn off Syrian strike jets over Hassakeh, revealing that U.S. special forces “advisers” fighting alongside the YPG were in the city.
“This is quite a significant development because the Kurds now seem to be determined to drive government troops out of the city and control it”, said Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep, near the Turkey-Syria border. “… We’ve been clear … from the start”, the forces that are fighting the Islamic State group “will enjoy the support of the United States”.
Syrian Kurdish groups seize almost all Hasaka * Turkey shells Kurdish positions in Manbij * Turkey-backed rebels expected to launch attack for Jarablus * Commander of Jarablus military council assassinated BEIRUT, Aug 23 (Reuters) – Kurdish forces were in near full control of Syria’s city of Hasaka on Tuesday after battling pro-government militias, though some government officials remained holed up in buildings in the city centre, a Kurdish official and monitoring group said.
Kurdish fighters now control 90 percent of the city after seizing the central prison, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday. We are not there yet”, Cook said, and recent actions by the Russians and the Syrians “only make it harder. It distributed leaflets and made loudspeaker calls across the city asking for army personnel… to hand over their weapons or face death…. “This battle is decided and we will not retreat”.
But last week, the Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, launched an assault on government-controlled areas of the city, activists said – marking a rift between onetime allies and further blurring the lines between the warring sides in Syria’s bloody internecine civil war.
Kurdish fighters’ gains were noticeable after government warplanes ceased bombing Kurdish positions in the city on Friday.
A meeting took place Monday between Kurds and government representatives inside Hmeimim, Russia’s airbase in the Syrian city of Latakia, a journalist close to the Syrian government told VOA.
Thousands of civilians have fled the city, where electricity has been cut and bakeries shut.
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The confrontation appears to have undone tacit understandings between the YPG and the Syrian army that had kept Hasaka relatively calm.
