The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed Syrian militia group led by Syrian Kurdish forces, said on Tuesday that its fighters clashed with Syrian government troops and took control of seven villages near Deir al-Zor, potentially opening a new front against the regime of dictator Bashar Assad.
Islamist rebels in western Syria meanwhile said they made further gains against the regime, capturing four more villages.
The SDF is a coalition of Arab militias under the direction of the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG/YPJ), a U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State.
The government of Turkey considers the YPG to be allied with, or even indistinguishable from, the violent PKK separatist group. Turkey has made several incursions into Syria to push the YPG back from the Turkish border and establish a border safety zone. During these efforts, Turkey allied itself with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the al-Qaeda offshoot that launched a lightning offensive against the Syrian government last Thursday.
The SDF said on Tuesday that it has “become responsible for protecting” seven villages in eastern Syria that were formerly held by Syrian government troops. The SDF portrayed this action as necessary because the Syrian army was not doing enough to protect the villagers from the chaos unleashed by the HTS offensive, particularly Islamic State fighters dislodged from the haunts by HTS and pushed into Kurdish territory.
Syrian government sources accused the SDF of opportunistically seizing territory while the army was busy trying to repel the HTS advance. The SDF, meanwhile, has been withdrawing from the path of the HTS offensive against the city of Aleppo, so it had enough manpower in Deir al-Zor to make a move against villages held by the central government.
“The deployment of our forces to these villages is in response to the urgent pleas and appeals of the local populace, following the increasing potential risks that ISIS will exploit the events in the west of the country,” the SDF said in a statement.
Syrian state media claimed the military “repelled” the SDF advance into the contested villages, while the SDF appeared confident it had the area under its control.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said he was “alarmed” by the rapid escalation of violence in Syria, where the brutal civil war that began in 2011 has been largely dormant since 2020.
“All parties must do their utmost to protect civilians and civilian objects, including by allowing safe passage to civilians who are fleeing hostilities,” said Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
“Syrians have endured the conflict for nearly 14 years. They deserve a political horizon that will deliver a peaceful future, not more bloodshed,” Dujarric said.
“Our office has documented a number of extremely concerning incidents resulting in multiple civilian casualties, including a high number of women and children, stemming from attacks by both Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and by pro-government forces,” added a spokesman for U.N. human rights commissioner Volker Turk.
Iran, which backs the Assad regime along with Russia, on Tuesday repeated its allegations that the United States and Israel are secretly behind the offensive by “takfiri terror groups” (that is, terrorists who are only pretending to be Muslims).
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi demanded “immediate and effective action” by the international community against the HTS offensive in Syria.
Araghchi linked the resurgence of the Syrian civil war to Israel’s “unbridled, unprecedented, and vicious atrocities against Palestinians,” and its “crimes against the Lebanese nation,” by which he meant Israel’s war against the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, respectively.
The Iranian foreign minister claimed the U.S. and Israel helped HTS regroup after its defeat in the Syrian civil war, and prodded the former al-Qaeda franchise to launch a new assault against the Assad government.
Iran’s state-run PressTV on Tuesday cited Russian media reports that claimed HTS terrorists are “planning chemical attacks in the northwestern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib.”
The report claimed HTS smuggled chemical weapons from its secret stronghold to southern Idlib province using “ambulances and medical vehicles belonging to the so-called civil defense group White Helmets.”
The White Helmets are a civil defense group loathed by Assad and his patrons in Russia and Iran. Syrian state media frequently accuses the White Helmets of assisting terrorists.
