Monitor says pro-Turkey fighters seize Syria town from Kurdish forces

A Syria war monitor said pro-Turkey fighters seized a strategic northern town from Kurdish forces on Sunday, in fighting parallel to a major rebel offensive elsewhere in Aleppo province.

Pro-Turkey fighters "took control of the town of Tal Rifaat" and a number of villages nearby, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, warning that around 200,000 Syrian Kurds in north Aleppo province have been "besieged by pro-Turkey factions".

Communications have been cut in Kurdish-majority areas, the monitor said, raising fears of possible "massacres" of Kurds.

The Observatory earlier Sunday said pro-Turkey factions killed government forces and attacked Kurdish fighters in Aleppo province in a push that began a day earlier and whose goals included cutting Kurdish supply lines.

Tal Rifaat is some 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Turkey's frontier, and has been the site of regular confrontations between Turkish-backed forces and Kurdish fighters they view as "terrorists".

Turkish forces and their proxies have controlled swathes of territory in northern Syria since Ankara in 2016 began successive ground operations to expel Kurdish fighters it links to a group waging a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

The Observatory had reported "armed clashes" between Kurdish forces and pro-Ankara factions north of Aleppo city.

It also said Ankara-backed groups seized control of the towns of Safireh and Khanasser southeast of Aleppo from government forces, and also took the Kweyris military airport.

The "violent clashes with regime forces... resulted in the death of nine government forces", said the Britain-based Observatory which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

- 'Reduce tension' -

Kurdish forces in Aleppo province mostly controlled an enclave in the Tal Rifaat area, as well as some neighbourhoods in the north of Aleppo city.

Tal Rifaat's population initially comprised mostly Arabs and Turkmen, but a 2018 offensive by Ankara on nearby Afrin sent waves of displaced Kurdish families to the area.

In 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened a new ground incursion to take control of three Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria, including Tal Rifaat.

The latest moves come as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and allied rebel groups based in the Idlib area carry out a days-long offensive in northwest Syria, seizing large areas of government-held territory including Aleppo city, with the exception of its Kurdish-held districts.

Fighters from the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces spearheaded an offensive that defeated the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019.

But Ankara sees the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, as an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The SDF in a statement accused Turkey of being behind the broad-scale attack, accusing it of seeking to "divide Syria".

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed the rebel offensive in Syria with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken Sunday, and said Ankara would support moves "to reduce tension", a ministry source there said.