A two-day battle between fighters loyal to the Syrian government and Kurdish forces has left 25 dead in the east of the country, after a group of armed men infiltrated a village, an NGO said. reported this Tuesday.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurdish-led and US-backed militias, said it had driven out “regime gunmen who had infiltrated the Diban area” in Deir Ezor province.
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The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurdish-led and US-backed militias, said it had driven out “regime gunmen who had infiltrated the Diban area” in Deir Ezor province.
Earlier this month, a ten-day conflict in the same area between the SDF and local militias left nearly 90 dead.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), which is based in the United Kingdom but has a network of informants on the ground, reported on Tuesday that 21 Syrian government fighters and three members of the SDF and one civilian were killed in this latest confrontation. .
The OSDH indicated that the fighting began after a group of fighters loyal to the government crossed the Euphrates River.
This river separates the area controlled by President Bashar al-Assad from the rebel territories in Deir Ezor province. The conflict in Syria began in 2011 when the government suppressed a wave of peaceful protests and left more than half a million dead.
The detention in late August of a local Arab SDF military authority led to several deaths in early September.
The UN then warned of “signs of further fragmentation of the conflict” in Syria, but the SDF then indicated that the dispute was a local phenomenon and did not mean a schism between its forces and the communities in Arabs living in areas under its control.
After the incident, the United States, which has hundreds of troops deployed in Deir Ezor in its fight against the Islamic State jihadist group, sent mediators to try to avoid conflict between SDF commanders and of Arab community leaders.