Syrian defence minister says 'comprehensive' truce agreed with SDF after Aleppo clashes

Tension has been brewing in city's Kurdish-majority districts

Syrian Defence Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra said he had agreed to a "comprehensive ceasefire" with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces commander on all fronts in northeastern Syria during a meeting in Damascus on Tuesday afternoon.

The ceasefire, immediately effective according to the ministry, came after a night of intense clashes in Aleppo, the first major urban warfare between the two sides since the new government came to power.

“A ceasefire was reached in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighbourhoods,” the official Syrian News Agency had said earlier in the day. The two Kurdish-majority districts of Aleppo, the country’s commercial capital and its second-largest city, are under SDF control.

Tension has been brewing for days in Aleppo, which is home to tens of thousands of Kurds and had a population of more than two million in 2010, before the civil war broke out in 2011. A US-brokered arrangement for the Kurdish forces to withdraw from the neighbourhoods has repeatedly failed. The militia had initially said it was there for defence purposes.

The latest ceasefire comes amid renewed US efforts to revive a March 10 deal between President Ahmad Al Shara and Mazloum Abdi, head of the SDF – which has maintained its control of large parts of northern and eastern Syria despite regime change.

Mr Al Shara met US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack and the head of the US military's Central Command, Adm Brad Cooper, in Damascus on Tuesday to discuss the latest developments and mechanisms needed to implement the March 10 agreement, according to Syria's state news agency.

At least one member of Syria's domestic security forces and a civilian were killed in the Aleppo clashes, Syrian state television reported.

An overnight curfew has been lifted, residents told The National. The sound of gunfire and artillery hitting the Kurdish areas echoed in the city, while Asayish, the Kurdish administration's internal security forces, hit back with heavy machine guns, they said.

“They were firing artillery at Sheikh Maqsoud from right next to my home,” said a woman who lives near the Aleppo National Museum and did not want to be identified.

A UN worker in Aleppo said management ordered staff to work from home. All government departments and schools in the city were closed.

Government forces “are not seeking military escalation”, Aleppo governor Azzam Al Ghareeb said. The violence came hours after the announcement of the results of a parliamentary vote that brought only loyalists of Mr Al Shara to the legislature.

Mr Al Shara led Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, an Al Qaeda splinter group that ousted the former regime in December, but has failed to reach an accommodation with many of the country’s religious and ethnic minorities. Among them are the Kurds, who comprise 10 per cent of Syria’s population, which stood at 22 million in 2010.

The Druze in southern Syria have also resisted the new order, as well Alawite coastal areas where authorities crushed what they described as an insurgency there in March. But the SDF holds control of areas where most of Syria's energy, electricity and commodities are produced.

Mr Barrack, who is also the US ambassador to Turkey, met Mr Abdi in eastern Syria on Monday. He has good ties with Mr Al Shara and has sought to bring the two sides together.

A meeting that Mr Barrack had arranged in July failed to take place. The main point of contention is the refusal of the SDF to disband, an ultimate goal of Mr Al Shara. He is allied with Turkey, which views the SDF as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).