Deadly battles break out between Kurdish-led fighters and Syria forces

Syrian government forces engaged in deadly clashes with Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Aleppo governorate, with at least four people killed in artillery fire and gun battles.

Syria’s state-run SANA news agency said a soldier was killed and three injured in an attack by SDF fighters on Tuesday.

Citing the Interior Ministry, state television later reported three civilians, including two women, were killed and others wounded, including two children, in shelling of a residential area that it blamed on the SDF.

“Heavy fighting between government forces and the SDF fighters is continuing and is particularly concentrated in the districts of Ashrafiyah and Sheikh Maqsoud, where the majority of the Kurds live,” Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas reported from Beit Jinn, Syria.

“And now we’re seeing the heavy shelling, mortar shelling, rockets being fired. But for the first time drones are also involved from both parties.”

The fighting comes two days after senior SDF leaders met Syrian government officials in Damascus for talks on the integration of Syrian Democratic Forces into the regular army.

‘Indiscriminate shelling’

The Syria Now news platform reported fighting began when the SDF launched a drone in the al-Midan neighbourhood of Aleppo.

The SDF in a statement denied being behind the shelling that killed the civilians and asserted instead that a shell launched by “factions affiliated with the Damascus government” landed in the al-Midan area.

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

The Aleppo Media Directorate urged civilians to avoid the Ashrafieh and Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhoods where fighting was under way.

How to incorporate the SDF – which controls large chunks of Syria’s north and northeast – into state institutions has remained a subject of consternation since President Ahmed al-Sharaa took office a year ago.

A March 2025 deal in which the SDF agreed “all civil and military institutions in northeastern Syria” would be merged into “the Syrian state, including border crossings, the airport, and oil and gas fields” has yet to come to fruition.

Earlier this week, talks between government officials and the main SDF commander stalled, state media reported. with “no tangible results” achieved.

New Israeli incursion

As fighting raged in northern Syria, at least 12 Israeli military vehicles entered a village in the south. The latest Israeli incursion on Tuesday in Saida al-Golan village, in the Quneitra countryside, comes as a Syrian delegation held negotiations with Israeli counterparts in the French capital.

The talks are expected to continue into a second and final day on Tuesday, even as “Israel is again violating Syrian sovereignty and undermining talks”, Al Jazeera’s Ayman Oghanna reported from Beit Jinn outside the capital, Damascus.

There are “vast chasms” between Syria’s and Israel’s desired outcomes, Oghanna said.

Israel is seeking full demilitarisation of southern Syria as well as maintaining military outposts in Jabal al-Sheikh, known in Israel as Jabal al-Sheikh, and protection for the Druze minority, which it used as a pretext last July to bombard Damascus as fighting erupted in Suwayda.

“The Syrian requests are far simpler – they simply want the Israelis to leave … and to end all strikes, incursions, and hostilities into sovereign Syrian territory,” Oghanna said.

The US, for its part, sees containment as its top priority, including avoiding regional escalation and curbing Iranian influence.

‘Absolutely counterproductive’

Marie Forestier, a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council’s Syria Project, told Al Jazeera that the distance between Syrian, Israeli and US goals is “very difficult”, especially given that “Israel is doing everything to destabilise Syria”.

“This is an absolutely counterproductive strategy,” Forestier added. “Israel might create more chaos in Syria, which could then bring to power people who could target Israel.”

A government source told SANA on Monday that the resumption of these negotiations affirms Syria’s unwavering commitment to restoring its non-negotiable national rights.

Since the fall of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, Israel has extended its occupation of Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights and staged numerous raids and bombardments in southern Syria.

For months, Israeli forces have conducted near-daily incursions into southern Syria, particularly in the Quneitra governorate, carrying out arrests, erecting checkpoints, and bulldozing land, all of which have prompted growing public anger and unrest.

Despite a reduction in direct military threats, the Israeli army continues to carry out air raids that have caused civilian casualties and destroyed Syrian army sites and facilities.

Over the past year, Israel has launched more than 600 air, drone and artillery attacks across Syria, averaging nearly two a day, according to a tally by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).