The U.S.-backed YPG, the Syrian wing of the PKK, on Tuesday launched an attack in eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour province to drive out Bashar Assad’s forces and Iran-backed groups from the east of the Euphrates River.
According to local sources, clashes between the PKK/YPG terrorists and regime forces and Iran-backed groups continue in several villages, including Murrat, Hasham, Mazlum and Salihiyye, which sit next to each other.
Iranian-backed groups are heavily present in the region starting from the city center of Deir el-Zour and ending in the district of al-Bukamal, close to the Syria-Iraq border.
Almost all of the Deir el-Zour territory east of the Euphrates River has been occupied by the PKK/YPG since 2015, while the provincial center and other rural areas are under the control of the Assad regime and Iran-backed groups.
Arab-majority Deir el-Zour is a resource-rich region bordering Iraq and home to dozens of tribal communities.
The terrorist group has forced many locals to migrate, bringing in its members to change the regional demographic structure, conducting arbitrary arrests, kidnapping children of local tribes for forced military recruitment and assassinating tribe leaders to yoke local groups.
It has also seized the region's oil wells – Syria's largest – and smuggles oil to the Syrian regime, despite U.S. sanctions, to generate revenue for its activities.
Amid Syrian anti-regime groups’ lightning offensive, the PKK/YPG sought to take advantage of Syrian regime forces withdrawing from parts of the country and create a “terror corridor” connecting Tal Rifaat to northeastern Syria but was thwarted by the Syrian opposition’s Syrian National Army (SNA).
The corridor would have linked the PKK/YPG-held northeastern regions to Tal Rifaat, a strategic area northwest of Aleppo.
Turkish security sources have said the Assad regime has been abandoning territories under its control in the eastern Euphrates region to PKK/YPG and this helped the terrorist group to dispatch terrorists from eastern Euphrates to the Aleppo, along with heavy weaponry.
Türkiye has been a supporter of the Syrian opposition in its efforts to drive away terrorist groups PKK/YPG and Daesh in Syria’s north. Ankara’s cross-border offensives helped the Syrian National Army to take control of areas near the Turkish border, which were plagued with terror attacks.
Syrian anti-regime forces started an unprecedented advance toward Aleppo to take control of the province from the Assad regime forces last week, reigniting the long-frozen civil war.
