The streets of Aleppo were deserted on Thursday morning, silent except for the intermittent thud of outgoing artillery.
The city has been plunged back into war amid days of escalating clashes between the Syrian government and the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
These clashes, which follow months of stalled negotiations and growing tensions, represent the most severe spate of violence between Syria’s two largest armed camps since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024.
Clashes have reportedly killed seven people in areas controlled by the SDF, a US-backed group that has resisted integrating into the central government, and five people in areas controlled by the government. Dozens have been wounded.
READ MORE
In Al-Razi Hospital, Dr Abdelkader Farah sits at his desk, exhausted from days of gruelling work. Hours earlier, he performed complex four-hour surgery on a four-year-old girl, Fatima Al-Zahira, who had been struck in the eye by shrapnel. Alongside that, he is also managing the hospital’s crisis response.
“We have 35 patients injured in the fighting, 12 of which are children,” he says. “So far, things are under control but if things worsen, the ministry [of health] has circulated a plan if – God forbid – the capacity of Aleppo’s hospitals is exceeded, to move patients to the countryside.”
Large crowds have been streaming through the Al-Zohoor humanitarian crossing over the last few days, hoping to escape the fighting – 46,000 people have been displaced, according to Aleppo’s Directorate of Social Affairs and Labour. Aleppo’s Zain Al-Abidin Mosque has been turned into a temporary displacement shelter following the fighting – just one of an expanding network of ad hoc shelters.
Groups of men bring in stacks of mattresses and bags of food which have been provided by “humanitarian associations and the donations of private individuals”, says Shahed Baki Zada, an official of Aleppo Governorate, who has been tasked with running the shelter.
This shelter is at capacity – 337 people are packed together, sleeping side by side on mattresses on the floor. We are prohibited from speaking to any of them.
“We don’t want them to feel pressured to talk,” says Shahed. “Everyone here is exhausted, we have all been through so much.”
Over the last year a tense peace has largely held between the government and the SDF, which still controls the Kurdish neighbourhoods of Aleppo and large tracts of territory in the country’s northeast.
Negotiations have been under way since March to integrate the SDF into Damascus’s security services, but have largely stalled. An end-of-year deadline to resolve the talks passed without success, contributing to the growing tensions that have now flared up.
While fighting has sporadically broken out between the two groups over the last year, on previous occasions both sides have rushed to de-escalate tensions.
[ ‘The only way is up’: Meet Syria’s self-appointed minister of tourismOpens in new window ]
However, this time feels different. On the road from Damascus to Aleppo, we passed several military convoys carrying men and heavy weapons headed towards the fighting.
The government declared the Kurdish neighbourhoods of Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsoud a “closed military zone”, giving its residents until 1.30pm local time to evacuate on Thursday. Since the deadline passed, the sound of outgoing rocket and artillery fire has been steady.
Fears are mounting that the government intends to seize the neighbourhoods by force after it “renewed its demand for the removal of armed groups from within the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh”, according to an official statement.
Both the SDF and the government have the capacity to mobilise tens of thousands of heavily armed and battle-hardened fighters, making a conflict between them highly explosive. While the SDF has been reducing its military presence in the city as part of the ongoing talks, the four-year siege of Aleppo between 2012 and 2016 demonstrates the difficulty of seizing heavily fortified city blocks
The real fear now is that fighting could spread beyond the city to Syria’s east, where the two sides face off across a frontline that stretches along 710km of the Euphrates river.
Kurdish forces issued a warning on Wednesday that they held Damascus “fully and directly responsible for ... the dangerous escalation that threatens the lives of thousands of civilians and undermines stability in the city”.
They warned of serious repercussions not limited to Aleppo alone, but which “risk plunging all of Syria back into an open battlefield”.
Syria’s state news agency, Sana, reported that “the SDF targeted internal security positions” in the eastern province of Deir Ez Zour on Thursday morning, although The Irish Times has not been able to independently verify this claim.
As of Thursday, clashes involving heavy weapons continue, although according to members of the security services on the ground, the government has yet to enter the neighbourhoods.
