Residents of the northeastern Syrian city of Hassakeh took advantage on Friday of a lull in the fighting between Kurdish forces and Syrian government troops to flee to safer areas nearby, after fighting intensified the previous day with government warplanes bombing Kurdish-controlled positions in the city for the first time, activists and others said.
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The coalition aircraft arrived to protect the USA personnel from the strikes just as the two Syrian government Su-24 bombers were departing, according to Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis, who said none of the US forces on the ground were harmed.
In an escalation of Syria’s five-year war, regime planes on Wednesday bombarded positions held by US-backed Kurdish forces in the city fighting the Islamic State (IS) Jihadist group.
Davis said this is the first time USA planes have been scrambled in response to Syrian bombing, and that the coalition has never before seen the Assad regime take such action against the mainly Kurdish YPG.
They said Kurdish forces began the offensive after midnight to take the southern district of East Nashwa, close to where a security compound is located, near the governor’s office.
The US-led coalition scrambled planes near the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakah, after Syrian SU-24 airplanes dropped bombs “dangerously near” the US Special Forces operators embedded with the Kurdish YPG militia in the area.
In a follow on incident Friday, two U.S. F-22s intercepted Syrian aircraft “which attempted to transit the area and were met by coalition aircraft”, Karns said.
Assad, backed by Russian Federation and Iran, has focused mostly on fighting Sunni Arab rebels who have been battling to oust him in western Syria with support from countries including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the US. The YPG is at the heart of a US -led campaign against ISIS in Syria, and controls swathes of the north where Kurdish groups have set up their own government.
The spokesperson added that the Russian military said its aircraft did not participate in the strikes near Hasakah. United States forces are training Kurds and Arabs to fight ISIS. That was denied in a leafleting campaign that said the YPG meant to take control.
Tucked in the northeastern corner of Syria, Hasakah is seen primarily as Kurdish territory and has remained mostly quiet since major fighting ended there previous year, making the strikes on the city all the more unusual.
The YPG on Sunday night gave Syrian regime fighters -that are surrounded by the Kurdish forces in Hasakah- an ultimatum to give up or fight to the end.
“Our correspondent said: “[Kurdish] fighters, as we speak, are now surrounding government buildings in Hasaka, giving soldiers an ultimatum: “Either you surrender, or you will be killed”.
“They would be well advised not to interfere with coalition forces or our partners”, he said. The Russian military says two of its ships have launched cruise missiles at targets in Syria from eastern Mediterranean.
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“We don’t have [a] specific number of casualties but approximately 12 civilian people [were] killed and more than 33 injured”. The militia recently succeeded in ousting IS from Manbij, a strategic city in northern Syria near the Turkish border.
