Turkish drones attacked Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) positions near the Euphrates River, the mostly Kurdish Syrian militia said on Wednesday, as it faces increasing military pressure from the Ankara-backed government in Damascus to relinquish territory.
The Syrian military told the SDF to leave the Dayr Hafir-Maskanah area on Tuesday after forcing SDF-affiliated fighters to leave Aleppo city, about 40km to the west, over the weekend.
The US, which supported the creation of the SDF during the war against ISIS in Syria, told the militia not to resist government troops in Aleppo, according to sources. But conceding the Dayr Hafir-Maskanah area, near two dams, would provide a crossing point for the Syrian army to enter the SDF's major territorial possessions east of the river.
The SDF said a Turkish Bayraktar drone attacked one of its positions in Maskanah overnight on Wednesday, after an earlier attack on Tuesday night, in what is described as “a serious and continuous escalation”. Sources in Jordan monitoring the situation said the SDF sustained casualties in the first drone attack, which was aimed at its supply line on the eastern side of the river, near the Tabaka dam.
There was no immediate comment from Turkish authorities. The Syrian government troops and the SDF exchanged artillery fire overnight but did not engage in significant battles, the sources said.
Turkish aerial support would boost the government's chances of taking Dayr Hafir-Maskanah if the SDF chooses to defend the area. One of the sources said the area is “more strategic” to the SDF than Aleppo, and that if was lost or ceded to the government under US pressure, oil-producing areas under its control east of the river would be in jeopardy.
Taking Dayr Hafir-Maskanah would make it much easier to capture the eastern parts of the river “in chunks”, the source said.
Amid the turmoil of the 2011-2024 Syrian civil war, the SDF gained control of areas along the Euphrates Valley that account for most of country's oil, gas, commodities and power output, although most of these areas are majority-Arab.
The US has supported the new Syrian government formed by rebels who overthrew the regime of former president Bashar Al Assad in December 2024, and its attempts to establish control across the country. In March last year, the US brokered an integration deal between Damascus and the SDF, which has not been realised.
Kurdish and other sources told The National that the SDF leader, Mazloum Abdi, was told by US Central Command to hand over the areas in Aleppo and not intervene on behalf of his men. The message was relayed before a US-supervised meeting between Israel and Syria in Paris on January 6.
The SDF was founded with US backing in 2015 as the ground component of the American-led war against ISIS in Syria. The bulk of government forces surrounding Dayr Hafir-Maskanah comprise Turkish proxies called the Syrian National Army. It had joined the military of the new state, and personnel from Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, the now dissolved rebel group that toppled the Assad regime.
