Syrian military police stand guard in Ashrafiyah neighbourhood in Aleppo, Syria, January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Karam al-Masri
ALEPPO, Syria Jan 10 (Reuters) - Dozens of Kurdish fighters left Syria's second city on Saturday, security sources told Reuters, and the army said it was still working to clear a remaining group of hardened fighters after a ceasefire failed to end days of deadly clashes.
The violence in Aleppo has deepened one of the main faultlines in Syria, where President Ahmed al-Sharaa's promise to unify the country under one leadership after 14 years of war has faced resistance from Kurdish forces wary of his Islamist-led government.
The United States and other world powers welcomed a ceasefire earlier in the week, but Kurdish forces refused to leave the last stronghold of Sheikh Maksoud under the deal. Syria's army said it would conduct a ground operation to clear them and combed through the neighbourhood on Saturday.
Reuters reporters then saw dozens of men, women and children streaming out of the neighbourhood on foot. Syrian troops put them onto buses and said they would be taken to displacement shelters. More than 140,000 people have already been displaced by the fighting this week.
The Reuters reporters later saw security forces put more than 100 men in civilian clothes on buses.
Syrian security officials at the scene identified them as members of the Kurdish internal security forces, known as the Asayish, and said they had surrendered. The Asayish later denied any of those who left Aleppo were fighters, saying they were all civilians that had been forcibly displaced.
ACCUSATIONS OVER VIOLATIONS
U.S. envoy Tom Barrack said on Saturday he had met Sharaa in Damascus, and urged all parties to "exercise maximum restraint, immediately cease hostilities, and return to dialogue." He said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's team was ready to mediate.
Barrack earlier said a consolidated ceasefire would see the "peaceful withdrawal of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from Aleppo," referring to the main Kurdish force.
Three Syrian security sources told Reuters a batch of Kurdish fighters including some commanders and their families were secretly ferried out of Aleppo overnight to the country's northeast.
Ilham Ahmad, who heads the Kurdish administration's foreign relations department, had overnight welcomed a deal to “safely redeploy fighters from Sheikh Maksoud” to eastern Syria. She was the only Kurdish official to acknowledge their exit from Aleppo as part of the deal, and there was no public announcement later of a completed withdrawal.
Turkish security sources hinted at a possible divide within Kurdish factions, saying Ankara had reached out to some senior Kurdish officials and noted a willingness to compromise, naming Ahmad and SDF commander Mazloum Abdi specifically. But the Turkish sources said other fighters opted to hold out and fight.
Kurdish fighters were still holed up in a hospital in Sheikh Maksoud on Saturday, security sources said. The SDF said it was waging street battles against government forces, accusing them of indiscriminately bombing civilian infrastructure, including the hospital, where civilians were taking cover.
They said the attacks were backed by Turkish drones. A Turkish security source denied they were used, and said the operation was "largely completed, there was no need" for Turkish backing.
The Syrian army has denied conducting indiscriminate attacks and accused the ٍSDF of attacking Aleppo's town hall with a drone. The SDF denied the claim.
The takeover of Sheikh Maksoud by the army would oust Kurdish forces from pockets of Aleppo they have held since Syria's war began in 2011. Kurdish forces still run a semi-autonomous zone in large parts of Syria's northeast.
They have resisted efforts to integrate into Syria's new government, made up of former rebels who ousted longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. With negotiations on their merging stalled, fighting erupted in Aleppo on Tuesday, killing at least nine civilians.
The clashes are the latest bout of sectarian violence in Syria. In 2025, more than 1,000 people from the Alawite minority were killed by government-linked forces and hundreds from the Druze minority were killed in the southern province of Sweida, including in execution-style killings.
The fighting in Aleppo has closed a key highway to Turkey and factories in its industrial zone. Syria's General Authority of Civil Aviation said on Saturday Aleppo's international airport would remain closed until further notice.
(Reporting by Khalil Ashawi, Mahmoud Hasano and Karam al-Masri in Aleppo, Orhan Qereman in Qamishli; additional reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara. Writing by Maya Gebeily. Editing by William Mallard, Barbara Lewis and Mark Potter)
