Syrian army declares ceasefire in Aleppo after heavy clashes with SDF

Syria’s Ministry of Defence has announced a ceasefire in three neighbourhoods of the northern city of Aleppo after days of heavy clashes between the country’s military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

A fierce exchange of fire extended into the night, with rescue workers scrambling to extinguish fires ignited by shelling, before the Defence Ministry said it would give armed groups a six-hour window on Friday to leave the contested areas.

In a statement, the ministry said the ceasefire in the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Ashrafieh and Bani Zaid from 3am (00:00 GMT) would ”pave the way for the restoration of law and official institutions and to protect civilians”.

The window for the SDF to withdraw closes at 9am and departing fighters will be permitted to carry “personal light weapons”, state news agency SANA reported, citing the Defence Ministry.

Aleppo’s media directorate said on Friday that SDF fighters encircled by the Syrian army in two districts of the city are to be sent to the Kurdish-majority region of northeastern Syria.

“In the coming hours, members of the SDF will be moved with their light weapons to the east of the Euphrates [river],” it said.

However, Kurdish councils ‍in ‍Syria’s Aleppo said on Friday they would not ⁠evacuate neighbourhoods under their ​control.

In a statement published by Syrian ​Kurdish ‌outlets, the local councils of the Ashrafieh and Sheikh Maqsoud ‌districts said calls to ‌leave Aleppo ⁠were “a call to surrender” and that Kurdish-led forces would ‌instead “defend their neighbourhoods”.

Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas, reporting from Aleppo, said that while some clashes had broken out between government forces and some SDF “factions” on Friday, the government was insisting the ceasefire had not collapsed.

“However, it’s extremely shaky and fragile … we saw SDF fighters shoot at the buses that were there to take them to the east of the country,” he said.

The United States had earlier welcomed the ceasefire announcement in a post on X by its envoy Tom Barrack.

He said Washington hoped for “a more enduring calm and deeper dialogue” and was “working intensively to extend this ceasefire and spirit of understanding”.

On Thursday, the Aleppo Internal Security Command said in a statement that a curfew was imposed “until further notice” in the Aleppo neighbourhoods of Ashrafieh, Sheikh Maqsoud, Bani Zeid, al-Siryan, al-Hullok and al-Midan.

At least 22 people have been killed and 173 wounded in Aleppo since fighting broke out on Tuesday, as the Syrian military accused the SDF of targeting civilian areas with artillery and mortar shells.

The Kurdish-led group has denied the allegations, saying this week’s casualties were caused by “indiscriminate” artillery and missile shelling by factions aligned with the government in Damascus.

The clashes come as talks on how to implement a March 2025 agreement to integrate the SDF, which has controlled large swaths of territory in Syria’s north and northeast, into the country’s state institutions faltered.

More than 100,000 civilians have fled their homes in Ashrafieh and Sheikh Maqsoud this week, the director of the media department in Aleppo told Al Jazeera.

Rana Issa, 43, whose family fled the Ashrafieh neighbourhood under sniper fire on Thursday, told the AFP news agency that “many people want to leave” but are afraid of being shot.

“We’ve gone through very difficult times,” Issa said. “My children were terrified.”

Reporting from an Aleppo hospital on Thursday evening, Al Jazeera’s Atas said the sound of heavy shelling could be heard from the facility as medical workers struggled to treat wounded patients.

“The situation is escalating further and further,” said Atas, adding that Aleppo is experiencing the “fiercest” fighting since the toppling of longtime Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

“We’re hearing artillery shelling, one after another,” he said.

‘Daunting task’ of reunification

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa met with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen on Friday, state media said, as she became the highest-ranking EU official to visit since al-Assad was ousted.

“We will continue working together in support of a peaceful and inclusive Syrian-led and Syrian-owned transition,” said a joint EU-Jordan statement issued on the eve of the EU leaders’ arrival in Damascus

SDF commander Mazloum Abdi (also known as Mazloum Kobani) said the violence in Aleppo has undermined talks with the government in Damascus, led by President al-Sharaa.

“The deployment of tanks and artillery in Aleppo neighbourhoods, the bombing and displacement of unarmed civilians, and attempts to storm Kurdish neighbourhoods during the negotiation process undermine the chances of reaching understandings,” Abdi said in a statement.

Armenak Tokmajyan, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center think tank, told Al Jazeera that the reintegration of Kurdish-led forces into Syrian state institutions “cannot happen just with force”.

Instead, Tokmajyan said al-Sharaa needs a multipronged approach to bring armed groups into the fold, including an inclusive national framework that outlines the direction post-Assad Syria will take.

“A lot of these armed groups don’t want to lay down their weapons because they don’t know what this state will look like,” he said.

“To be honest, the central government is facing a daunting and very difficult task … to end the fragmentation, and with that, end the instability in Syria and create a relatively unified country.”