Syria has been warned not to fly warplanes in areas where American troops are advising Kurdish and Arab forces fighting the Islamic State group, the Pentagon said on Monday.
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The military pulled U.S. special operations forces from their northern Syria position after the Syrian military began bombing nearby, attacking Kurdish positions in and around the city of Hasakah, according to a USA defense official Friday.
“It’s not a no fly-zone”, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters yesterday.
The unprecedented strikes prompted the US-led coalition to scramble aircraft to protect its special operations forces helping the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) as they battle IS in northern Syria.
The truce includes a “halt to all hostilities and the return to government forces of any positions seized by Kurdish fighters”, said a Syrian military source on Sunday. Later, he said, “You can label it what you want”. “And we will continue to defend them, and, if need be, we will send aircraft again to defend our forces”. Special Forces team on the ground.
Last week, long-range Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers used the Nojeh air base, near the city of Hamadan in north-west Iran, to launch air strikes against armed groups in Syria. “They were very positive about that”, a YPG commander said.
“This was done as a measure to protect coalition forces”, Davis said.
The attack in the Hasakah area has deeply unsettled Pentagon officials.
The military forces fighting for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including pro-government militias, will be allowed to leave.
By taking Jarablus themselves, the rebel groups would preclude an assault on the town by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of Kurdish-dominated militias who on August 6 took the city of Manbij, 30 kilometers to the south, from ISIL. More recently, it has placed higher importance on preventing the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region on its border.
The YPG, or the People’s Protection Units, has ties to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
But their advances have caused concern among regional powers, particularly Turkey, that the Kurds are seeking to consolidate their territorial hold in Syria in a bid to create their own de-facto state on Turkey’s southern border.
According to the source, regime forces have intensified artillery bombardment of several districts in western al-Hasakah, amid reports of casualties. The SDF is also planning to capture the same town.
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The military council of Jarabulus on Sunday released a statement warning Turkey for it’s “aggressive actions” since the start of the Manbij operation in northern Syria, expressing concerns about a potential Turkish intervention in the ISIS-held town of Jarabulus. The US scrambled jets to protect its Kurdish allies from Assad, but it remains to be seen how it would address similar attacks by its ally and fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member.
