Intermittent clashes took place east of the city of Manbij in the eastern Aleppo countryside on Saturday evening between Syrian army forces and Kurdish-led SDF militias, including an exchange of rocket fire that resulted in a number of civilian and military casualties.
The media department of the Defense ministry stated that SDF forces fired several rockets that landed on civilian homes in and around the village of Al-Kayariya, wounding four army personnel and three civilians.
The ministry added that army units "responded to the sources of fire" in villages near the contact lines.
In a separate statement carried by the SANA news agency, the ministry reported that army forces thwarted an infiltration attempt by an SDF group at 9:40 PM, targeting one of its deployment points near Al-Kayariya. It did not mention the extent of the losses or further details about the course of the clashes.
Field sources confirmed to Zaman al-Wasl that tensions in the region remain high, noting that the SDF has been continuing for weeks to build field fortifications along the contact lines with Syrian army forces in various areas of Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, Hasakah, and the Aleppo countryside. This includes digging tunnels and transferring military reinforcements to the vicinity of Manbij.
Swathes of north and northeast Syria are controlled by a Kurdish-led administration whose de facto army, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded the fight that helped defeat ISIS in Syria in 2019.
Despite last March's agreement between the SDF and the Damascus government, Kurdish forces remain evasive, attempting to circumvent integration into the new Syrian army. Kurdish fears are growing with the growing rapprochement between Washington and Damascus, and President Ahmed al-Sharaa's full support for extending state sovereignty across all Syrian territory.
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