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United States fighter jets scrambled against Syrian warplanes over Hassakeh

He also pledged to play a “more active” in the next months in putting an end to the conflict.

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He said the strikes “did not directly impact our forces” but they were “close enough that it gives us great pause”.

Coalition aircraft were sent to the area, Davis said, but by the time they reached the airspace around Hasakah, the Syrian planes were departing.

According to Tasnim dispatches, Syrian forces, backed by military advisers, managed to seize control over several residential complexes in Dariya, western suburb of Damascus, on Monday after fierce clashes with the terrorists. It was unclear whether the aircraft had carried out bombing runs.

“We have clearly shown that American aircraft would defend ground troops if they were threatened”, said Mr. Davis.

In an indication of their reluctance to escalate further, pro-government media said on Saturday they had held preliminary peace talks.

The US has its trooped embedded with the Kurdish forces, and argued that the Syrian airstrikes were endangering them.

Earlier a source from the Hasakeh governorate said a delegation of Russian officials and members of the pro-regime militia National Defence Forces (NDF) had arrived at Qamishli airport for a meeting to take place on Monday.

The loss of Hasakeh would be a strategic blow to President Bashar Assad’s government and would be a setback for Russian Federation, which has given air support to Assad’s forces to prevent further territorial losses in the country.

The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and forces loyal to the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad are now embroiled in a violent battle in the city of Hasakah, located in northeast Syria. Coalition Special Operations forces, which have been advising Kurdish and Arab fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, were in the area, but none were injured.

Additionally, the US -led coalition contacted the Russian military through a communications link it has for air safety over Syria; the Russians said they did not have aircraft in the area.

The Observatory said thousands of inhabitants had begun to flee Hasakeh, where bread was running out and electricity supplies have been cut.

That action came close to sparking the intervention of USA warplanes when Washington warned against strikes that might endanger its military advisers with the Kurds on the ground. CNN adds that some USA forces may have also already been pulled from their positions near where the Syrians have been bombing.

In what some defense analysts are calling a serious escalation of the Syrian civil war, Syria’s air force bombed Kurdish units with embedded American advisors.

Elsewhere in Syria on Friday, two Russian warships operating in the Mediterranean Sea fired volleys of Kalibr cruise missiles at Nusra Front targets in Syria.

A surge in violence in Syria’s second city Aleppo has left 333 people dead since July 31, the Observatory said yesterday. The government still has a foothold in the cities of Hasaka and Qamishli.

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After hours of calm late Sunday, clashes broke out after midnight in the southern district of Ghweiran and around the buildings of Al-Masaken, which the Kurds later captured, said the monitor.

QAMISHLI Syria A wounded child lies in a hospital bed in this northeastern city yesterday a day after he was wounded in an airstrike by Syrian government forces against Kurdish positions over the flashpoint northeastern city of Hasakeh. — AFP