Twenty-five people were killed in clashes between Kurdish-dominated forces and fighters loyal to the Syrian regime in an Arab town in eastern Syria, an NGO said on Tuesday.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, a coalition supported by the United States) announced on Tuesday that they had “hunted out the armed men of the regime who had infiltrated the locality of Dheibane”, in the province of Deir Ezzor.
At the beginning of September, clashes between the FDS, dominated by the Kurds, and fighters from local Arab tribes in this region left 90 dead in around ten days.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), the clashes which broke out on Monday and continued until dawn on Tuesday left 21 dead in the ranks of pro-regime fighters, and three on the side of the MSDS. A woman was also killed.
The predominantly Arab province of Deir Ezzor is crossed by the Euphrates which marks the border between the areas held by the regime of Bashar al-Assad and those controlled by the SDF.
According to the OSDH, an NGO based in the United Kingdom but which has a vast network of sources in Syria, “pro-regime fighters infiltrated Monday into areas under FDS control by crossing the Euphrates and clashes opposed them.”
In a statement, the SDF accused the gunmen of infiltrating from the west bank of the Euphrates “under the cover of indiscriminate bombing” from regime-held areas.
The SDF spearheaded the offensive that defeated ISIS in Syria in 2019 and still enjoys support from Washington. They control a semi-autonomous Kurdish zone in the northeast of the country, including swaths of the oil-rich Deir Ezzor province, where American forces are deployed.