Scores of U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters left two neighborhoods in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo Friday as part of a deal with the central government in Damascus, which is expanding its authority in the country,
AP reports.
The fighters left the predominantly Kurdish northern neighborhoods of Sheikh Maksoud and Achrafieh, which had been under the control of Kurdish fighters in Aleppo over the past decade.
The deal is a boost to an agreement reached last month between Syria’s interim government and the Kurdish-led authority that controls the country’s northeast. The deal could eventually lead to the merger of the main U.S.-backed force in Syria into the Syrian army.
The withdrawal of fighters from the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces came a day after dozens of prisoners from both sides were freed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reported that government forces were deployed along the road that SDF fighters will use to move between Aleppo and areas east of the Euphrates River, where the Kurdish-led force controls nearly a quarter of Syria.
