Since Friday evening, clashes in several villages around the city of Manbij have left 101 dead, including 85 members of pro-Turkish groups and 16 from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The SDF said it had repelled "all the attacks from Turkey's mercenaries supported by Turkish drones and aviation".
The Turkish defence ministry said it had "neutralised" 32 Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, without providing further details.
Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria resumed their fight with the SDF at the same time as Islamist-led rebels were launching an offensive on November 27 that overthrew Syrian president Bashar al-Assad just 11 days later.
The pro-Ankara groups succeeded in capturing Kurdish-held Manbij and Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province, despite US-led efforts to establish a truce in the Manbij area.
The fighting has continued since, with mounting casualties.
During a visit to Damascus on Friday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said security of the Kurds is "essential for a peaceful Syria." She said this requires "an end to the fighting in the north and the integration of the Kurdish forces... in the Syrian security architecture."
The SDF controls vast areas of Syria's northeast, and parts of Deir Ezzor province in the east, where the Kurds created a semi-autonomous administration following the withdrawal of government forces during the civil war that began in 2011.
The group, which receives US backing, took control of additional territory after capturing it from the jihadists of the Islamic State group.
Ankara accuses the main component of the SDF, the People's Protection Units (YPG), of affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency in southeastern Turkey and is banned as a terrorist organisation by the government.
The Turkish military regularly launches strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and neighbouring Iraq, accusing them of being PKK-linked.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria's new leader and the head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), told Al Arabiya TV in late December that local Kurdish-led forces should be integrated into the national army.
HTS led the coalition of rebel groups that overthrew Assad last month.
Syria monitor reports blasts at arms depots near Damascus
Syria (AFP) Jan 5, 2025 -
A Syria war monitor said explosions on Sunday rocked an area near Damascus housing weapons depots used by the toppled government of Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said the blasts in the Kisweh area, south of the Syrian capital, may be the result of an Israeli air strike.
The Israeli military, which has struck many military sites in Syria since Assad's fall, told AFP in Jerusalem it did not attack the site.
The Britain-based Observatory, which has a network of sources in Syria, said that "loud blasts resonated in the wider capital area".
The explosions occurred "at ammunition depots of the former regime forces... near the town of Kisweh", sending a thick cloud of smoke billowing over the site, the Observatory said.
An AFP video journalist saw small fires burning in the blackened rubble of a flattened building on the outskirts of the town of Kisweh. Several other one-storey buildings stood undamaged nearby.
The explosions continued into Sunday evening, ringing out across surrounding areas, the journalist said.
Israel, which rarely comments on its actions in neighbouring Syria, has carried out hundreds of air strikes on military sites since Islamist-led forces ousted Assad and seized Damascus last month.
Israel has said it was seeking to prevent weapons from falling into hostile hands.
Most recently, the Observatory said Israeli war planes hit sites of the now defunct Syrian army in the Aleppo area on Friday.
In late December, the Observatory said 11 people died in an explosion at an arms storage facility in the Adra area northeast of Damascus, adding that it was possibly the result of an Israeli strike. Israel denied any involvement.
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