\n<\/p>\n
The United States has urged Syrian troops to halt their advance through Kurdish-held territory in Syria\u2019s north, amid clashes with Kurdish-led forces over strategic posts and oilfields along the Euphrates River.<\/p>\n
The rapid advance of Syrian troops on Saturday came after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to retreat east of the river, following recent fighting in Aleppo and areas east of the city over stalled plans to merge the SDF into the Syrian state.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Brad Cooper, who heads the US military\u2019s Central Command (CENTCOM), wrote on X that Syrian troops should \u201ccease any offensive actions in areas\u201d between the city of Aleppo and the town of Tabqa, approximately 160km (100 miles) further east in the Raqqa governorate.<\/p>\n On Saturday, the Syrian Army Operations Command told Al Jazeera Arabic that the military had entered Tabqa, a strategic town near a dam and a military airbase. The SDF denied the claim, saying its forces were \u201cstill in their positions\u201d there.<\/p>\n The SDF had said it would pull back from the key towns of Deir Hafer and Maksana, as well as some surrounding villages in the Aleppo governorate, whose residents are predominantly Arab.<\/p>\n Syria\u2019s army took control of the area on Saturday and accused the SDF of violating a withdrawal agreement by targeting an army patrol near Maksana, \u201ckilling two soldiers\u201d.<\/p>\n The SDF, meanwhile, accused Damascus of violating the agreement by entering the towns \u201cbefore our fighters had fully withdrawn\u201d.<\/p>\n Later, Syrian troops advanced further, with state news agency SANA reporting they had expanded into the Raqqa countryside, entering Kurdish-controlled towns and villages, including Hneida, Rajm al-Ghazal, Mansoura and Zur Shamar, and imposing a curfew in the Maadan area, as they raced closer to Tabqa.<\/p>\n The SDF accused Damascus of betrayal. \u201cHeavy clashes continue between our forces and Damascus factions, who violated the recent agreements and betrayed our forces during the implementation of the withdrawal provisions,\u201d it said in a statement, adding that parts of Raqqa had been \u201csubjected to artillery shelling and rocket fire\u201d.<\/p>\n But the SDF said in a statement on Saturday that Tabqa was \u201coutside the scope of the agreement\u201d and that it would fight to keep the town, as well as an oilfield in its vicinity.<\/p>\n Reporting from Aleppo, Al Jazeera\u2019s Zein Basravi said there was ongoing shelling in the Raqqa governorate.<\/p>\n \u201cJudging by the amount of weapons, the amount of long-range artillery, the truckloads of ammunition we saw going in that direction, it is unsurprising,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are fights ongoing for oilfields that were controlled by the SDF, so this is a very ongoing, active theatre of operations, and things are moving very quickly,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The Syrian Petroleum Company said on Saturday that it had taken over the al-Rasafa and Safyan oilfields from the Syrian Army shortly after soldiers seized the areas of Deir Hafer and Maskana from the SDF.<\/p>\n The US has had to recalibrate its Syria policy to balance years of backing for the SDF, with whom it was allied in the fight against ISIL (ISIS), and its support for the new Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose forces ousted Bashar al-Assad in late 2024.<\/p>\n US envoy Tom Barrack travelled to Erbil in \u200cthe Kurdish region of northern Iraq on Saturday to meet with Abdi and Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani.<\/p>\n The Kurdish region\u2019s authorities welcomed a decree announced on Friday that formally recognises the Kurdish language and restores citizenship to Kurdish Syrians, but said that it needed to be translated into law and enshrined in the constitution.<\/p>\n From Baghdad, Al Jazeera\u2019s Bernard Smith said that behind the \u201cconciliatory words\u201d lay the \u201cunresolved issue of how to integrate these tens of thousands of heavily armed, well-trained SDF fighters into the Syrian Army\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was supposed to start last year. It never got going by the end of the year. That\u2019s what led to these clashes earlier in January,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The United States has urged Syrian troops to halt their advance through Kurdish-held territory in Syria\u2019s north, amid clashes with Kurdish-led forces over strategic posts and oilfields along the Euphrates River. The rapid advance of Syrian troops on Saturday came after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) agreed to retreat east of the river, following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018Betrayal\u2019<\/h2>\n
Unresolved issue<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"