Deadly Clashes Erupt in Aleppo Between Syrian Forces, Kurdish Fighters

Syria ’s state-run SANA news agency said a soldier was killed and three others were wounded in an attack by the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. State TV later reported that three civilians, including two women, were killed and others were wounded, including two children, in shelling of a residential area that it blamed on the SDF.

SANA said nine employees of the Aleppo Directorate of Agriculture were wounded by SDF shelling that hit its office.

The SDF in a statement denied being behind the shelling that killed the civilians and said that a shell launched by “factions affiliated with the Damascus government” landed in the al-Midan neighborhood. The SDF claimed the target was the adjacent Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood.

“This indiscriminate shelling constitutes a direct attack on residential areas and exposes the lives of civilians to grave danger,” it said.

The SDF also said a drone strike launched by government forces killed one resident of Sheikh Maqsoud and wounded two children, and that shelling in the nearby Bani Zaid neighborhood killed a woman and wounded dozens. There was no mention of those incidents in state media.

At Aleppo's Al-Razi Hospital, which received a number of the wounded, Ahmad Abu Sheikh was waiting to see his 4-year-old daughter, Fatima, who had been on the operating table for hours after being hit by shrapnel from a shell that landed near her. Her father said she had lost her eye.

“I just want to know what can I tell my daughter when I see her? Where did her eye go? What can I tell her?” he said.

Afrin Jawan, a civil society activist in Sheikh Maqsoud, said in a written message, “There are 400,000 civilians besieged (in the Kurdish neighborhoods) and subjected to indiscriminate shelling with all types of heavy and medium weapons ... by factions affiliated with the Ministry of Defense in Damascus.”

There have been intermittent clashes in the predominantly Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud and Achrafieh neighborhoods of Aleppo in recent months.

The leadership in Damascus under interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa signed a deal in March with the SDF, which controls much of the northeast. The SDF was to merge with the Syrian army by the end of 2025, but there have been disagreements on how it would happen. In April, scores of SDF fighters left Sheikh Maqsoud and Achrafieh as part of the deal with Damascus.

Officials from the central government and SDF met again Sunday in Damascus, but government officials said no tangible progress had been made. The SDF has tens of thousands of fighters and is the main force to be absorbed into Syria’s military.

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

The SDF for years has 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, although a peace process is now underway.

Both sides have accused each other of seeking to derail the March agreement.

“The SDF organization once again proves that it does not recognize the March 10 Agreement and is trying to derail it and drag the army into an open battle of its choosing,” Syria's Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The SDF, meanwhile, said government forces had committed a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law” by targeting residential neighborhoods. It called the attacks "planned and deliberate, systematically targeting infrastructure and essential services, including water and electricity.”

By evening, a tense calm had returned to the area. Previous rounds of fighting ended with truce agreements, but no official agreement was announced Tuesday, leaving the possibility that the clashes could flare again.