Aleppo ceasefire ends govt assault on Kurdish neighborhoods as war crimes evidence emerges

Reports indicate that Syrian forces carried out killings and mass detentions of Kurdish residents of the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood  

News Desk - The Cradle 

A ceasefire agreement was reached on 11 January to end the week-long Syrian government assault on the two Kurdish-majority neighborhoods in Aleppo, as evidence of Syrian government war crimes and mass detentions continues to emerge.

The chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Mazloum Abdi, wrote on X early Sunday that “with mediation by international parties to halt the attacks and violations against our people in Aleppo, we have reached an understanding that leads to a ceasefire.”

The agreement “ensures the evacuation of the martyrs, wounded, stranded civilians, and fighters from the Ashrafieh and Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhoods [in northern Aleppo] to North and East Syria,” Abdi stated.

He extended his “deepest respect and tribute” to the “resistance fighters of Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyeh" and “condolences to ourselves, as we do to the families of the martyrs and to our people.”

Syrian state media (SANA) announced Sunday that buses carrying hundreds of Kurdish fighters departed shortly after midnight on Saturday from the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood toward northeastern Syria.

The Syrian army announced in a statement on Saturday that all military operations in the two Kurdish neighborhoods had ended, and that the army would begin handing over health and government facilities in the neighborhoods to state institutions and would gradually withdraw its forces.

At least 82 people were killed in the fighting, including 43 civilians, 38 government fighters, and at least one Asayish member, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

The Syrian government has also said that approximately 155,000 people have been displaced from the Kurdish-majority neighborhoods due to the violence.

Syrian government forces began their assault on Aleppo’s Kurdish neighborhoods on 6 January in an effort to pressure the SDF in northeast Syria to dissolve its military forces and integrate with Syria’s extremist-dominated government, led by the former Al-Qaeda commander Ahmad al-Sharaa.

As the fighting in Aleppo ends, video and photographic evidence of war crimes committed by Syrian forces continues to emerge.

In one case, a video shows the bodies of 13 Kurdish civilians, along with a female Asayish fighter, who were massacred by government forces. The bodies are gathered in a single room of a house and have been burned. Government troops filming the scene speak about the victims, joking that “their condition is excellent” and calling them pigs.

A video from the 10 January in Aleppo shows government forces executing a wounded man.  A truck carrying abducted Kurdish civilians, including a woman, is shown. Government forces drag the man from the back of the truck, lay him on the ground, and execute him with a hail of bullets from their Kalashnikov rifles.

Another video showed a government fighter throwing the body of a Kurdish woman from the third floor of a destroyed building as other fighters below cheer.

Government fighters circulated photos of a captured Kurdish fighter after they detained him, stripped him to his underwear, cut flesh from his chest, and gouged his eye out.

Despite government claims that residents wishing to leave the Kurdish neighborhoods would be allowed to do so safely through humanitarian corridors, video footage showed the arrest of men and young men as they were leaving the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood.

A video shows more than 50 unarmed Kurdish men and women who have been detained and are forced to sit in the street at gunpoint under the pretext that they belong to the SDF and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The fighter taking the video says, “These are the pig captives, pig prisoners, Qandil dogs, these are the federalism projects. Praise be to God who humiliated them.”

Syrian government forces have detained at least 300 Kurds, according to an interior ministry official speaking with AFP.

SDF forces left the two Kurdish neighborhoods with their heavy weapons in April as part of an integration agreement signed between SDF chief Abdi and Syrian President Sharaa in March.

Local men belonging to the Asayish internal security forces were left to defend the neighborhoods in Aleppo with only light weapons after the SDF withdrawal.

Since then, no progress has been made to integrate the SDF into the Syrian army, as the move would leave the Kurdish minority largely defenseless against government forces, which carried out large-scale massacres against Syria’s Alawites and Druze communities earlier this year.

However, such an integration would also deal a blow to Kurdish aspirations for independence, a project encouraged by Israel to divide Syria. It would also force the SDF to relinquish control of Syria’s major oil fields and possibly lead to the dismantling of their autonomous region in northeast Syria, which they call Rojava.