The U.S. scrambled jets Thursday to protect American special operators and their Kurdish allies after Syrian aircraft conducted airstrikes against Kurdish positions around a northern Syrian city, a Pentagon spokesman said.
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Heavy fighting entered its second day in the northeast Syrian city of Hasakeh, where Kurdish YPG forces battles the Syrian Army over territory on the ground, and United States and Syrian warplanes loomed overhead, setting the stage for an even bigger battle.
American fighter jets were sent to the area where the Syrian jets conducted the airstrikes, but by the time the US planes arrived the Syrian forces had flown away.
A Syrian military source told AFP late Sunday that a cease-fire deal had been reached to end hostilities, hand back any new positions seized during the clashes and evacuate the wounded to Qamishli.
These warnings do not seem to have been heard because the planes of the Syrian regime have struck again on Friday areas held by Kurdish forces in Hasaka.
When government forces withdrew from Kurdish areas to concentrate on fighting rebels elsewhere in mid-2012, Kurdish militias led by the YPG swiftly took control. “The Syrian regime would be well advised not to interfere with coalition forces or its partners”.
“We made it clear that coalition aircraft would defend its troops on the ground if threatened”, U.S. Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway said last week.
U.S. forces then contacted Russia, which has been bombing parts of Syria for almost a year in support of President Bashar al-Assad, but Russian military officials said the planes were Syrian.
Washington regards them as the most effective fighting force on the ground in Syria and has provided weapons and special forces military advisers. The U.S.is pinning its hopes for reducing violence on talks about a political agreement with Russia, Syria and worldwide powers.
While the YPG controls most of the northeast, the Syrian government has maintained footholds in the cities of Hasaka and Qamishli at the border with Turkey.
Residents said thousands of civilians in the ethnically mixed city have fled to villages in the countryside as the fighting intensified.
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.
“This was done as a measure to protect coalition forces”, Captain Jeff Davis said.
He said the Syrian planes did not respond to efforts by ground forces to contact them. They support local militias, including the YPG, in the fight against so-called Islamic State (IS).
The development comes after Russian Federation this week began using Iranian territory to launch airstrikes in Syria, with Moscow’s bombers flying out of the Islamic Republic for three straight days to hit targets in the war-ravaged country.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the Serpukhov and the Zeleny Dol corvettes launched three long-range Kalibr cruise missiles on Friday at the al-Qaida-linked militant group of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front. The Syrian province of Hasakah, a Kurdish stronghold, Is now under siege by the Assad regime.
In the summer of 2015, Islamic State forces attempted to wrest the city from Kurdish and Syrian military forces, but were eventually repelled.
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More than 250,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Syria since the civil war began in March 2011.
