Kurds battle Assad forces, open new front line

At least 18 people have been killed in unprecedented fighting between Kurdish forces and Syrian government troops in the northeastern city of Hassakeh, an anti-regime group said Sunday, as hundreds of civilians fled rebel-held areas near Damascus that had been blockaded for over a year, The Daily Star reported, citing news agencies.

The clashes, which erupted in the early hours of Saturday, were continuing for a second day, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“So far, eight Kurdish People’s Protection Units [YPG] fighters and security police have been killed, along with nine regime soldiers and militiamen,” Observatory director Rami Abdel-Rahman said.

A woman civilian was also killed in the fighting Saturday.

The clashes broke out after Kurdish fighters detained around 10 regime loyalists they accused of seizing part of a demilitarized zone.

Under a deal agreed last year, Kurdish forces control around 30 percent of the city’s Kurdish and mixed Kurdish-Arab districts, with regime forces controlling most of the city’s majority-Arab neighborhoods.

Certain districts are off-limits to both sides under the deal.

The two sides have fought together to keep ISIS jihadis out of Hassakeh, a provincial capital of some 200,000 people, but Kurdish relations with government forces are complicated. The regime withdrew from most Kurdish-majority areas of Syria in 2012, focusing its forces on fighting the burgeoning Sunni Arab-led rebellion.

Since then, the Kurds have worked to build autonomous local governments in the three regions where they form the majority population.

Kurdish forces have taken over most security responsibilities in those areas.

The army shelled three Kurdish-majority areas on the edges of Hassakeh city Saturday, and fighters from YPG clashed with Syrian forces inside the city throughout the day, the YPG said on its website.

Syrian Kurds, who say they suffered years of marginalization under Assad, had on occasion fought with the president’s loyalists in territorial disputes, but never in sustained clashes. Kurdish activists posted photos showing smoke rising from buildings and YPG fighters raising the Syrian Kurdistan flag in areas said to be taken from government forces.