According to military officials, the strikes were launched by Syrian Su-24 fighter jets flying over Hasakah.
Advertisement
People’s Protection Units (YPG) spokesman Redur Xelil said the air strikes had hit Kurdish districts of the city, which is mostly controlled by Kurdish groups, and positions held by a Kurdish security force known as the Asayish.
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said the USA has increased combat air patrols in that area and has warned Syria that America will defend coalition troops.
The Pentagon passed a message to the Syrian government through its Russian allies stating the U.S.
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. The Syrian government strikes, he said, “did not directly impact our forces”. The U.S. initially contacted the Russians, and Moscow denied responsibility for the bombings. VOA video shows Syrian military planes circling over the city as residents sought cover on Friday.
The Pentagon has now increased air patrols in the region and plans to continue that, he said.
The attack in the Hasakah area has deeply unsettled Pentagon officials.
The regime and Kurdish forces share a common enemy in ISIS, which controls most of the Euphrates valley to the south, but there have been tensions between them in Hasakeh that have sometimes led to clashes.
The Syrian Arab Army’s Facebook page, which initially described the potential confrontation as an “interception” by the United States, later denied that there had been “any attempt at interception”.
While forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russian Federation and Iran, have focused mostly on fighting Sunni Arab rebels, the YPG has prioritised carving out and safeguarding predominantly Kurdish regions of northern Syria.
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. Just a month prior to that, the Obama administration announced that it was sending 250 more special operators to Syria, to bolster the force of about 50 that were already on the ground.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Forces of Syria (DSF), which is dominated by the YPG, said it was handing over control of Minbij to local forces.
While frequent skirmishes have arisen in Hasakah and Qamishli between the YPG and the government-backed militias, “they haven’t escalated to a huge degree”, said Chris Kozak of the Institute for the Study of War.
Naser Haj Mansour, a Kurdish official in the YPG-affiliated Syria Democratic Forces alliance, said Kurdish forces had taken some additional positions including an economics college.
Syria’s complex, multi-sided war has created a patchwork of areas across the country controlled by the government, rebels, Kurdish forces or Islamic State. After an exchange of shelling, which eventually involved Syrian army forces, the government for the first time brought in airstrikes.
Advertisement
“They would be well advised not to interfere with coalition forces or our partners”, he said.
