The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces fully withdrew from a Turkish-encircled town in northern Syria Sunday, in what appeared to be the start of a wider pullout under a ceasefire deal. Ankara launched a cross-border attack against Syria's Kurds on October 9 after the United States announced a military pullout from the north of the war-torn country.

A US-brokered ceasefire was announced late Thursday, giving Kurdish forces until Tuesday evening to withdraw from a buffer area Ankara wants to create inside Syrian territory along its southern frontier. The deal requires the SDF - the de facto army of Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria - to pull out of a border zone 32 kilometres (20 miles) deep into Syrian territory, the length of which is not clear.

The Kurds have agreed to withdrawing from a stretch of 120 kilometres (70 miles) from Tal Abyad to Ras al-Ain. But Turkey ultimately wants a much longer "safe zone" to stretch 440 kilometres along the frontier. On Saturday, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi said Kurdish forces would withdraw from the 120-kilometre zone as soon as they were allowed out of Ras al-Ain, which was besieged by Turkish troops and its Syrian proxies.

The SDF later said its fighters had evacuated the border town as part of the truce agreement. "We don't have any more fighters" in Ras al-Ain, SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel said on Twitter. Turkey's defence ministry confirmed earlier that Kurdish fighters were leaving Ras al-Ain. An AFP reporter on the ground saw at least 50 vehicles, including ambulances, leaving the town hospital, from which flames erupted shortly after their departure.

Dozens of fighters in military attire left on pickups, passing by checkpoints manned by Ankara-allied Syrian fighters, he said. In the town of Tal Tamr, a woman ululated as a crowd gathered to receive the convoy from Ras al-Ain, another correspondent said. The departure from Ras al-Ain came a day after a medical convoy managed to evacuate wounded from the hospital.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019