ALEPPO (Syria): Syria’s government was in full control of Aleppo on Sunday after taking over the city’s Kurdish neighbourhoods and evacuating fighters there to Kurdish autonomous areas following days of deadly clashes.
Residents of the Ashrafiyeh neighbourhood, the first of two areas to fall to the Syrian army, began returning to their homes to inspect the damage, finding shrapnel and broken glass littering the streets.
The violence started earlier this week after negotiations stalled on integrating the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and forces into the country’s new government.
A Syrian security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that 419 Kurdish fighters, including 59 wounded and an unspecified number of dead, were transferred from the Sheikh Maqsud neighbourhood — the second area to come under army control — to the Kurdish-controlled zone in the northeast.
The arriving fighters were met with tears and vows of vengeance from hundreds of people who gathered to greet them in the northeastern Kurdish city of Qamishli, according to AFP correspondents at the scene.
“We will avenge Sheikh Maqsud… we will avenge our fighters, we will avenge our martyrs,” Umm Dalil, 55, said.
A correspondent saw crossed-out images of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and US envoy Tom Barrack, as people chanted against Sharaa.
Kurdish leader Mazlum Abdi said on X that the combatants were evacuated “through the mediation of international parties to stop the attacks and violations against our people in Aleppo”.
The Syrian official said that 300 other Kurds, including fighters and members of the domestic security forces, had been arrested.
Britain-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that 300 “young Kurds” had been arrested, stating that they were “civilians, not fighters”.
On Sunday in Ashrafiyeh, an AFP correspondent saw people carrying bags and blankets return to their homes after being searched by security forces.
Yahya al-Sufi, a 49-year-old clothing seller, told AFP he had fled during the violence.
“When we returned, we found holes in the walls and our homes had been looted… Now that things have calmed down, we’re back to repair the walls and restore the water and electricity,” he said.
Sheikh Maqsud, however, remained off limits, with no one allowed to enter, an interior ministry source told AFP.
Syrian authorities said on Sunday that the toll from the fighting had reached “24 dead and 129 wounded since last Tuesday”, while the Observatory counted 45 civilians and 60 soldiers and fighters from both sides killed.
The Observatory also mentioned “field executions” and the burning of fighters’ bodies in Sheikh Maqsud by government forces, along with other “violations”, but AFP was unable to independently verify the claims.
US envoy Tom Barrack met Saturday with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, and afterwards issued a call for a “return to dialogue” with the Kurds in accordance with an integration agreement sealed last year.
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