Seven Syrian soldiers were killed and 20 others injured when a YPG/SDF drone struck an ammunition site in northeastern Hassakeh, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), citing the ministry’s Media and Communications Department, said army units discovered a workshop for manufacturing improvised explosive devices and drone munitions near the al-Yarubiyah border crossing in the Hassakeh countryside.
The facility, the ministry said, contained several Iranian-made drones that the SDF was preparing to arm.
After troops began securing and sweeping the site, the SDF targeted it with a suicide drone, killing seven soldiers and injuring 20 others, it added.
The Syrian army called the attack, which it said took place as soldiers were securing a captured military base containing explosives, a dangerous escalation.
After days of rapid gains, the government on Tuesday said it had reached an understanding with the SDF for it to agree on a plan over a four-day cease-fire to integrate into the central state, and that otherwise the SDF would face an assault on the two last main cities it holds.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a main ally of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, said on Wednesday that the SDF, regarded by Türkiye as an extension of the PKK/YPG terrorist group, must lay down arms and disband now to avoid further bloodshed.
The U.S., which backed the SDF as its main ally in driving Daesh terrorists from swathes of Syria in bloody fighting a decade ago, on Tuesday urged the group to accept the government's offer.
The U.S. said the reasons for its partnership with the SDF had expired, but that it was still concerned about the fate of thousands of detained Daesh terrorists and civilians associated with them in facilities guarded by the SDF.
The SDF said on Tuesday it accepted the cease-fire and that it would not engage in any military action unless attacked. SDF leader Ferhat Abdi Şahin (codenamed Mazloum Abdi) had earlier said it regarded the protection of Kurdish majority areas as a "red line."
Syrian troops were still positioned outside the last main SDF-held cities in the northeast, Hasakkeh and Qamishli, on Wednesday, Reuters reporters in the area said.
They had brought significant reinforcements the previous evening, with convoys of tanks and other military vehicles, as well as buses packed with fighters, arriving late into the night.
The troops had frozen their advance after al-Sharaa's new cease-fire announcement the previous evening, and were waiting for further orders that would be shaped by the SDF's reply to al-Sharaa's proposal.
