Syrian army and Kurds exchange strikes in area near Aleppo declared closed military zone

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ALEPPO, Syria (AP) — Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces exchanged fire on Tuesday in a tense area in eastern Aleppo province, marking a possible new escalation after clashes in the country's second city.

No casualties were immediately reported by the warring sides.

The Syrian army earlier declared an area east of the northern city of Aleppo, the country's second largest city, as a “closed military zone." Eastern Aleppo province has been a tense frontline, dividing areas under the Syrian government and the large swaths of northeastern Syria under the SDF.

In a statement, the SDF said government forces have started shelling Deir Hafer. The Kurdish-led group later said government troops launched exploding drones, artillery, and rockets to a village south of Deir Hafer.

Syrian state television later said the SDF targeted the village of Homeima on the other side of the Deir Hafer frontline with exploding drones.

Several days of clashes in Aleppo last week, that displaced tens of thousands of people, came to an end over the weekend with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters from the contested neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsoud. Aleppo Governor Azzam Ghareeb said Damascus now has full control of Sheikh Maqsoud and Achrafieh where the clashes took place.

Syrian officials have accused the SDF of building up its forces near the towns of Maskana and Deir Hafer, about 60 km (37 mi) east of Aleppo city. SANA, the state news agency, reported that the army had declared the area a closed military zone because of “continued mobilization” by the SDF “ and accused the group of using the area as a launchpad for drone attacks in Aleppo city. The army in its statement said the armed groups should withdraw east of the Euphrates River.

A drone hit the Aleppo governorate building on Saturday shortly after two Cabinet ministers and a local official held a news conference on the developments in the city.

The SDF have denied mobilizing in the area or being behind the attack.

The flaring tensions come amid an impasse in political negotiations between the central state and the SDF.

The leadership in Damascus, under interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, signed a deal in March with the SDF which controls much of the northeast, for it to merge with the Syrian army by the end of 2025. There have been disagreements on how it would happen.

Some of the factions that make up the new Syrian army, which was formed after the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive in December 2024, were previously Turkey-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.

The SDF has for years been the main U.S. partner in Syria in fighting against the Islamic State group, but Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a long-running insurgency in Turkey. A peace process is now underway.

Despite the long-running U.S. support for the SDF, the Trump administration in the U.S. has also developed close ties with al-Sharaa’s government and has pushed the Kurds to implement the March deal.

Shams TV, a broadcaster based in Irbil — the seat of northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region — had been set to air an interview with al-Sharaa on Monday but later announced it had been postponed for “technical” reasons, without giving a new date for broadcast.

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Associated Press journalist Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.