The Syrian Army’s latest fight with the Kurdish SDF is further escalating today, with the army now not only declaring multiple Kurdish neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo “active military zones” and now imposing daytime curfews on those parts of the city, while firing artillery against “SDF positions” within.
The fighting began Tuesday at a checkpoint in Deir Hafer, also in the Aleppo Governorate. Clashes between the military and the SDF are nothing new, and usually taper off after a few hours. This, however, continued to escalate, and spread to Aleppo by Wednesday, with at least 11 civilians killed.
Persistent amid all of this fighting is that both sides insist the other started it, and blamed the other for the civilian casualties. That’s no different on Thursday, when the toll rose to 15 killed and scores wounded, and the state media claimed that over 100,000 have been displaced by the fighting, which of course they presented as exclusively the fault of the SDF.
A group of civilians carry a wounded man following renewed clashes between the Syrian army and the Syrian Democratic Forces, in Aleppo, Syria, January 8, 2026. REUTERS/Karam al-Masri
Amid the mounting violence, the SDF claimed that they had killed at least 9 Syrian soldiers, though the military has yet to confirm this, and media are presenting the casualties as purely civilian. There has been no confirmation of the casualties on the SDF side, either.
SDF leader Mazoum Abdi issued a statement likening the violence in Aleppo to the government’s massacres in Latakia in early 2025. He accused them of using “the language of war” in dealing with regions not under their control and calling for all parties to stop the attacks.
Never one to let tensions with the Kurds go unexploited, the Turkish government backed the Syrian military over the fighting, and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused the SDF of secretly being in league with Israel.
The SDF and the Syrian government reached a deal in March of 2025 under which the SDF would be integrated into the military, though final terms of that deal have yet to be reached, and constant fighting between the two sides is only getting worse, suggesting any near term integration is unlikely.
