The United States on Saturday urged the Syrian government and Kurdish authorities to return to negotiations after days of deadly clashes in the northern city of Aleppo.
Conflicting reports emerged from the city, as authorities announced a halt to the fighting and said they began transferring Kurdish fighters out of Aleppo, but Kurdish forces denied the claims shortly after.
An AFP correspondent saw at least five buses on Saturday carrying men leaving the Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsud district accompanied by security forces, with authorities saying they were fighters though Kurdish forces insisted they were “civilians who were forcibly displaced”.
AFP could not independently verify the men’s identities.
Another correspondent saw at least six buses entering the neighbourhood and leaving without anyone on board, with relative calm in the area.
It came as US envoy Tom Barrack on Saturday met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, and afterwards issued a call for a “return to dialogue” with the Kurds in accordance with an integration agreement sealed last year.
The violence in Aleppo erupted after efforts to integrate the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and military into the country’s new government stalled.
Since the fighting began on Tuesday, at least 21 civilians have been killed, according to figures from both sides, while Aleppo’s governor said 155,000 people have been displaced.
On Saturday evening, state television reported that Kurdish fighters “who announced their surrender... were transported by bus to the city of Tabaqa” in the Kurdish-controlled northeast.
A Syrian security source had told AFP that the last Kurdish fighters had entrenched themselves in the area of al-Razi hospital in Sheikh Maqsud, before being evacuated by the authorities.
Kurdish forces said in a statement that news of fighters being transferred was “entirely false” and that the people taken included “young civilians who were abducted and transferred to an unknown location”.
On the outskirts of Sheikh Maqsud, families who were unable to flee the violence were leaving, accompanied by Syrian security forces, according to an AFP correspondent.
Men were carrying their children on their backs as women and children wept, before boarding buses taking them to shelters.
Dozens of young men in civilian clothing were separated from the rest, with security forces making them sit on the ground before being taken by bus to an unknown destination, according to the correspondent.
A Syrian security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the young men were “fighters” being “transferred to Syrian detention centres”.
At the entrance to the district, 60-year-old resident Imad al-Ahmad was waiting for permission to return home.
“I left four days ago... I took refuge at my sister’s house,” he told AFP. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to return today.”
Nahed Mohammad Qassab, a 40-year-old widow also waiting to return, said she left before the fighting to attend a funeral.
“My three children are still inside, at my neighbour’s house. I want to get them out,” she said.
The clashes, some of the most intense since Syria’s new Islamist authorities took power, present another challenge as the country struggles on a new path after the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
Both sides have blamed the other for starting the violence in Aleppo.
A flight suspension at Aleppo airport was extended until further notice.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, much of which they captured during Syria’s civil war and the fight against the Islamic State group.
But Turkey, a close ally of neighbouring Syria’s new leaders, views its main component as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which agreed last year to end its four-decade armed struggle against Ankara.
Turkey has launched successive offensives to push Kurdish forces from the frontier.
Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast, accused Syrian authorities of “choosing the path of war” but said the Kurds remained committed to agreements reached with Damascus.
The March integration agreement was meant to be implemented last year, but differences, including Kurdish demands for decentralised rule, have stymied progress as Damascus repeatedly rejected the idea.
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Syria’s authorities have committed to protecting minorities, but sectarian bloodshed rocked the Alawite and Druze communities last year.
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