BEIRUT: A Syria war monitor reported that pro-Turkey fighters seized a strategic northern town from Kurdish forces on Sunday, in fighting parallel to a major rebel offensive elsewhere in Aleppo province.
Pro-Turkey fighters “took control of the town of Tal Rifaat” and a number of nearby villages, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The monitor warned that around 200,000 Syrian Kurds in northern Aleppo province have been “besieged by pro-Turkey factions.” Communications have been cut in Kurdish-majority areas, the monitor said, raising fears of potential “massacres” of Kurds.
Earlier on Sunday, the Observatory reported that pro-Turkey factions killed government forces and attacked Kurdish fighters in Aleppo province. This push began a day earlier, and its goals included cutting Kurdish supply lines.
Tal Rifaat is located about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Turkey’s border and has been the site of regular confrontations between Turkish-backed forces and Kurdish fighters, whom Turkey considers “terrorists.”
Turkish forces and their proxies have controlled large swathes of territory in northern Syria since 2016, when Ankara launched successive ground operations to expel Kurdish fighters it links to a group waging a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. The Observatory had earlier reported “armed clashes” between Kurdish forces and pro-Ankara factions north of Aleppo city.
It also said Ankara-backed groups seized control of the towns of Safireh and Khanasser southeast of Aleppo from government forces, and also took control of Kweyris military airport. The “violent clashes with regime forces… resulted in the deaths of nine government soldiers,” according to the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.
Kurdish forces in Aleppo province mostly controlled an enclave in the Tal Rifaat area, as well as several neighborhoods in northern Aleppo city.
Tal Rifaat’s population was initially composed mostly of Arabs and Turkmen, but a 2018 offensive by Ankara on nearby Afrin sent waves of displaced Kurdish families to the area.
In 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened a new ground incursion to take control of three Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria, including Tal Rifaat.
The latest developments come as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and allied rebel groups based in the Idlib area are conducting a days-long offensive in northwest Syria, seizing large areas of government-held territory, including parts of Aleppo city, with the exception of its Kurdish-held districts.
