Pro-Turkey Syria groups reduce presence in Kurdish area: official
Pro-Turkey Syrian groups have scaled down their military presence in an historically Kurdish-majority area of the country's north which they have controlled since 2018, a Syrian defence ministry official said on Tuesday.
The move follows an agreement signed last month between Syria's new authorities and Kurdish officials that provides for the return of displaced Kurds, including tens of thousands who fled the Afrin region in 2018.
The pro-Ankara groups have "reduced their military presence and checkpoints" in Afrin, in Aleppo province, the official told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Their presence has been "maintained in the region for now", said the official, adding that authorities wanted to station them in army posts but these had been a regular target of Israeli strikes.
After Islamist-led forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, the new authorities announced the disbanding of all armed groups and their integration into the new army, a move that should include pro-Turkey groups who control swathes of northern Syria.
Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies carried out an offensive from January to March 2018 targeting Kurdish fighters in the Afrin area.
The United Nations has estimated that half of the enclave's 320,000 inhabitants fled during the offensive.
Human rights groups have since accused the pro-Turkey forces of human rights violations in the area.
Last month, the Kurdish administration that controls swathes of northern and northeastern Syria struck a deal to integrate its civil and military institutions into those of the central government.
Syria's new leadership has been seeking to unify the country since the December overthrow of longtime president Bashar al-Assad after more than 13 years of civil war.
This month, Kurdish fighters withdrew from two neighbourhoods of Aleppo as part of the deal.
Syrian Kurdish official Bedran Kurd said on X that the Aleppo city agreement "represents the first phase of a broader plan aimed at ensuring the safe return of the people of Afrin".
The autonomous Kurdish-led administration's de facto army, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, played a key role in the recapture of the last territory held by the Islamic State group in Syria in 2019.
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