Syrian Army Orders Evacuations as Fighting Intensifies in Kurdish Aleppo

The Syrian Army on Thursday told residents of Kurdish neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo to evacuate in the face of airstrikes, even as the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said it was winning the intensifying battle for control of the city.

Aleppo has been restless since mid-December, when tensions between the Kurds and the military government headed by former al-Qaeda lieutenant Ahmed al-Sharaa boiled over into a skirmish at a security checkpoint.

The SDF was a major U.S. ally during the war against the Islamic State and it has been pushing for a degree of autonomy from Sharaa’s government, which took control after seizing Damascus and ousting dictator Bashar Assad in December 2024.

The autonomous zone claimed by the SDF includes a swath of northeastern territory and portions of Aleppo, the most important city in the region. The SDF has its own internal police force, known as the Asayish, which operates in the Kurdish-majority districts of the divided city. The checkpoint where fighting broke out in December was jointly manned by the Syrian Army and the Asayish. Each blames the other for shooting first and triggering the conflict.

The situation in Aleppo seemed to stabilize after a few days in December, but on Tuesday a fresh round of even more intense fighting broke out, displacing thousands of civilians and killing at least four. Tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians were seen fleeing Aleppo for the presumably safer ethnic enclave of Afrin. (Read more from “Syrian Army Orders Evacuations as Fighting Intensifies in Kurdish Aleppo” HERE)