Syria's military on Thursday opened a corridor for civilians to escape an area near the Euphrates it intends to capture from a mostly Kurdish militia.
Many residents have already fled the Dayr Hafir-Maskanah area, on the western bank of the Euphrates, which was overrun by the Syrian Democratic Forces militia after the fall of Syria's former leader Bashar Al Assad in 2024.
However, the new Syrian authorities have been slowly capturing SDF-held areas over the past year, with the militia's last strongholds in Aleppo city falling last week.
The government is headed by President Ahmad Al Shara, who led Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, the group that spearheaded the offensive that ousted Syria's former president Bashar Al Assad in December 2024.
Once a militant group linked to Al Qaeda, HTS was officially disbanded last year but its political and military influence remains strong.
If the SDF concedes the Dayr Hafir-Maskanah area − which lies near two major dams and has a population of about 100,000 − this would give the Syrian army a crossing point to enter the Kurdish-dominated militia's major territories east of the river. That area contain the bulk of Syria's sources of energy, power, and agriculture.
The country fragmented during the 2011 to 2024 civil war and the SDF, with US support, became one of its most powerful groups. It acquired mostly Arab-populated territory until a Turkish intervention curbed its gains.
A Syrian army statement called on “our civilian people to stay away from all the positions of SDF” in Dayr Hafir-Maskanah, and to use the M15 road from the village of Hamima to escape to Aleppo, about 50km west.
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.
Thousands of residents have already fled the Dayr Hafir-Maskanah area in the past 48 hours towards the government-controlled area of Manbij to the north, according to sources in Jordan.
“My two sisters and their families fled yesterday through side roads to Minbij,” said Um Riad, a refugee in a farming area north of Amman.
SDF positions in Dayr Hafir-Maskanah, as well as its supply route across the river, near the Tabaka dam, have come under more frequent Turkish drone attacks in the past 24 hours, the sources said.
Government forces − mostly comprising the Syrian National Army, a Turkish proxy that joined the military of the new state − have been surrounding the area since the beginning of this week. Turkey is the main regional backer of the Damascus government and wants the SDF disbanded.
The Syrian army has been also shelling SDF positions in Dayr Hafir-Maskanah but without any significant attempt to engage in ground combat, one of the sources tracking the situation said. No mass casualties have been reported.
“The weather has been a been a factor, but the government is also hoping to take the area without real fighting, like Aleppo,” the source said, as snow blankets parts of Syria. “The Aleppo scenario looks like it will be repeated.”
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.
Tom Barrack, the US envoy to Turkey and Syria, said on Wednesday he discussed the situation in Syria with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara this week. Washington, Mr Barrack said, is “committed to working together” with Turkey to advance the ongoing US efforts in Syria.
The US has spent around $1 billion on the SDF since its creation in 2015. However, it started considering the new Syrian government as an anti-terrorism partner in the middle of last year, and in November admitted Damascus into its anti-ISIS international coalition.
