Reuters HASAKA, Syria: The Kurdish YPG militia launched a major assault Monday to seize the last government-controlled parts of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka after calling on pro-government militias to surrender, Kurdish forces and residents said.
They said Kurdish forces began the offensive after midnight to take the southeastern district of Nashwa, close to where a security compound is located near the governor's office close to the heart of the city.
The powerful YPG militia had earlier captured Ghwairan, the only major Arab neighborhood still in government hands.
The fighting this week in Hasaka, which is divided into zones of Kurdish and Syrian government control, marks the most violent confrontation between the Kurdish YPG militia and Damascus in more than five years of civil war.
The Syrian army deployed warplanes against the main armed Kurdish group for the first time during the war last week, prompting a U.S.-led coalition to scramble aircraft to protect American special operations ground forces.
The YPG is at the heart of a U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in Syria and controls swaths of the north, where Kurdish groups associated with the militia have set up their own government since the Syrian war began in 2011.
Syrian state media accused the YPG-affiliated security force known as the Asayish of violating a ceasefire and said its members had torched government buildings in Hasaka.
It accused the Asayish of igniting the violence through escalating "provocations", including the bombing of army positions in Hasaka, and said the Asayish aimed to take control of the city.
"WE WILL NOT RETREAT"
The YPG denied it had entered into a truce. It distributed leaflets and made loudspeaker calls across the city asking for army personnel and pro-government militias to hand over their weapons or face death.
"To all the elements of the regime and its militias who are besieged in the city you are targeted by our units," leaflets distributed by the YPG said.
"This battle is decided and we will not retreat ... We call on you to give up your weapons or count yourselves dead."
The YPG, known as the People's Protection Units and which has ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party, appeared intent on leaving a nominal Syrian government presence confined to within a security zone in the heart of the city, where several key government buildings are located, Kurdish sources said.
The complete loss of Hasaka would be a big blow to President Bashar al-Assad's government and would also dent efforts by Moscow, which had sought through a major military intervention last year to help Damascus regain lost territory and prevent new rebel gains.
Kurdish forces have expanded their control of the city despite the bombing of several locations by Syrian jets.
Thousands of civilians in the ethnically mixed city, including members of the Christian community, have fled to villages in the countryside as the fighting intensified, residents said.
The confrontation appears to have undone tacit understandings between the YPG and the Syrian army that had kept the city relatively calm.
Many critics and residents say the YPG was handed weapons and territory by the Syrian army at the start of the conflict as Assad sought to focus on crushing the mainly Sunni Arab rebels who sought to topple him.
Hasaka's governor told state media after the flare-up of violence the military had armed the YPG with weapons and tanks to fight extremist elements but had not expected them to turn against them.
Hasaka's population, swelled by displaced Syrians fleeing areas that fell under ISIS control, is broadly divided along ethnic lines, with Kurds mainly in the city's eastern neighborhoods and Arabs in the southern parts.
Kurdish source refutes truce deal with regime
Agencies HASSAKEH, Syria/ISTANBUL: Syria’s military said Sunday a truce deal has been reached with the Kurds in the flashpoint city of Hassakeh, but a Kurdish source said it has yet to be finalized.
The northeastern city has been rocked by deadly clashes between U.S.-backed Kurdish forces and fighters loyal to President Bashar Assad since Wednesday.
In a bid to calm tensions, a delegation of Russian officials from the coastal Hmeimim military airport arrived in the city of Qamishli Saturday for talks with the two sides.
A Syrian military source told AFP the deal was struck between regime forces and Kurdish fighters after two days of mediation by regime ally Russia.
The three-point agreement calls for a “halt to all hostilities and the return to regime forces of any positions seized by Kurdish fighters” since Wednesday, the Syrian military source said. It also stipulates that casualties would be transferred north to Qamishli. The military source said additional negotiations would take place Monday.
However a Kurdish military source told AFP from Hassakeh that none of the three points had been agreed.
Earlier a source from the Hassakeh governorate said a delegation of Russian officials and members of the pro-regime militia National Defense Forces had arrived at Qamishli airport for a meeting to take place Monday.
A local journalist working with AFP toured seven army checkpoints that had been seized by Kurdish fighters and confirmed that regime forces were back in control.
But Kurdish fighters still held three positions previously controlled by the NDF in Al-Nashwa, a southern district of Hassakeh, the journalist said.
The regime and Kurdish forces share a common enemy in Daesh (ISIS), but there have been growing tensions between them in Hassakeh.
Clashes erupted last week after Kurds demanded the NDF be dismantled in Hassakeh, and violence escalated Thursday when regime warplanes bombarded Kurdish-held positions in the city for the first time.
Regime aircraft overflew the city Sunday morning but without carrying out attacks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. In the northern province of Aleppo, the scene of heavy clashes all month between government forces and rebels allied with militants, 28 civilians were among 38 people killed Saturday in strikes by the regime and its Russian allies, the Observatory said.
Elsewhere Sunday, Syrian rebels were preparing to launch an operation to capture the Daesh-held town of Jarablus at the border with Turkey, a senior Syrian rebel said, a move that would frustrate Kurdish hopes to expand further in that area.
The rebels, Turkey-backed groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, are expected to assault Jarablus from inside Turkey in the next few days, said the rebel official. Jarablus, located on the western bank of the Euphrates, is the last significant town held by the militant Islamist group on Syria’s border with Turkey.
By taking Jarablus themselves, the rebel groups would preclude an assault on the town by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which already holds the eastern bank of the Euphrates opposite the town.Turkey is worried that Kurds are using the SDF’s westward expansion against Daesh to extend their influence across northern Syria.
Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that Ankara would play a more active role in addressing the conflict in Syria in the coming six months, adding that while Assad could have a role in the interim leadership, he must play no part in its future.
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