Cautious calm in Aleppo after clashes between Syrian forces and Kurdish fighters

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DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — A cautious calm spread Tuesday in neighborhoods of Aleppo in northern Syria after overnight clashes between Syrian security forces and Kurdish fighters.

The violence came as tensions grow between the central government in Damascus and Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria.

Syrian state-run news agency SANA reported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces targeted checkpoints of the Internal Security Forces on Monday evening, killing one and injuring four.

SDF forces fired into residential areas in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Achrafieh neighborhoods of Aleppo “with mortar shells and heavy machine guns” and there were civilian casualties, but it was not clear how many were wounded and killed, SANA reported.

The SDF denied attacking the checkpoints and said its forces withdrew from the area months ago.

Syrian state-run TV reported Tuesday morning that a ceasefire had been reached, without giving further details.

The new leadership in Damascus under interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of an Islamist insurgent group that helped overthrow former Syrian President Bashar Assad, inked a deal in March with the U.S.-backed SDF, which controls much of the country’s northeast.

Under the agreement, the SDF was to merge its forces with the new Syrian army, but implementation has stalled.

Damascus seeks to consolidate control over all of Syria, while the SDF wants to maintain the de facto autonomy of northeast Syria from the central state. Syria held parliamentary elections Sunday in most areas of Syria, but voting was not held in SDF-controlled areas.

In April, scores of SDF fighters left the two predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo as part of the deal with Damascus.

The SDF issued a statement Tuesday accusing government military factions of carrying out “repeated attacks” against civilians in the two Aleppo neighborhoods and imposing a siege on them.

Government forces then attempted “to advance with tanks and armored vehicles, targeting residential areas with mortar shells and drone strikes, which has led to civilian casualties and significant damage to property,” the SDF said, which “provoked the residents and pushed them to defend themselves, alongside the internal security forces in the neighborhoods.”