Tens of thousands flee Aleppo neighbourhoods as Syrian government clashes with Kurds intensify

ALEPPO, Syria Syrian authorities warned civilians to leave a contested area in the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday and opened a corridor for them to evacuate for a second day as clashes intensified between government and Kurdish forces.

The government of Aleppo province gave residents until 1pm local time to evacuate in coordination with the army. State news agency SANA, citing the army, said the military would begin “targeted operations” against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid half an hour after that deadline.

The military later issued a series of maps with the areas under evacuation order.

An Associated Press journalist at the scene heard sporadic sounds of shelling as civilians streamed out of the area Thursday morning. Nearly 140,000 people have been displaced across the province, according to Aleppo’s Directorate of Social Affairs and Labor.

“There’s a large percentage of them with difficult medical issues, elderly people, women, and children,” said Mohammad Ali, operations director with the Syrian Civil Defense in Aleppo.

The SDF has said that at least eight civilians were killed in the Kurdish-majority neighbourhoods, while government officials reported at least seven civilians and one soldier have been killed in the surrounding government-controlled areas in the fighting that broke out Tuesday. Dozens more on both sides have been wounded.

Each side has accused the other of deliberately targeting civilian neighborhoods and infrastructure.

Clashes intensified in the afternoon, with exchanges of shelling and drone strikes, and tanks could be seen rolling into the contested neighborhoods.

St. Ephrem Syrian Orthodox Church in Aleppo city was hosting about 100 people who had fled the fighting. Parishioners donated mattresses, blankets and food, priest Adai Maher said.

“As soon as the problems started and we heard the sounds (of clashes), we opened our church as a shelter for people who are fleeing their homes,” he said.

Among them was Georgette Lulu, who said her family is planning to travel to the city of Hasakeh in SDF-controlled northeast Syria when the security situation allows.

“There was a lot of bombing and loud noises and a shell landed next to our house,” she said. “I’ve been through these circumstances a lot so I don’t get frightened, but my niece was really afraid so we had to come to the church.”

Hassan Nader, a representative of the Ministry of Social Affairs in Aleppo said about 4,000 were staying in shelters in the city while tens of thousands had gone to other areas of the province, and the ministry was working with NGOs to supply them with food, medicine and other necessities.

The clashes come amid an impasse in political negotiations between the central state and the SDF.

The leadership in Damascus under interim President Ahmad Al Sharaa signed a deal in March with the SDF, which controls much of the northeast, for it to merge with the Syrian army by the end of 2025. There have been disagreements on how it would happen. In April, scores of SDF fighters left Sheikh Maqsoud and Achrafieh as part of the deal.

Officials from the central government and SDF met again on Sunday in Damascus, but government officials said that no tangible progress had been made.

Some of the factions that make up the new Syrian army, formed after the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive in December 2024, were previously Turkey-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.

In the city of Qamishli in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, thousands of protesters gathered Thursday, chanting, “SDF, we are with you until death.”

Sawsan Khalil, a protester in Qamishli who was displaced from Afrin in Aleppo province in a 2018 Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces there, called for the international community “to feel for the Syrian people who have been killed for no reason” in Aleppo.

Izzeddin Gado, co-chair of the Qamishli City Council accused the government forces of “following a foreign and regional agenda from Turkey.”