Syrian defence ministry member shot dead in Aleppo, tensions continue with SDF

A Syrian government officer was killed on Saturday after being shot in Aleppo, as tensions with Kurdish forces continued to rattle Syria's largest city.

The state-run Syrian Al-Ikhbariah channel reported that a member of the Defence Ministry was killed "following gunfire by unknown individuals in the Seif al-Dawla neighborhood of Aleppo."

It added that the Ministry of Interior imposed a security cordon around the site of the incident, while criminal investigations have begun into the case.

No further details about the incident were given.

The incident comes as tensions continue to grip Aleppo, following clashes earlier this week between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and government troops that left at least three people dead.

A security chief accused snipers affiliated with the SDF of targeting a security checkpoint in the city. 

The head of Aleppo's internal security, Mohammad Abdulghani, said this constituted a new violation of the agreement between the two sides, according to a statement carried by the Syrian Interior Ministry.

The statement accused the SDF of continuing to violate a truce by attacking security checkpoints, warning that such actions will be met with the necessary measures, holding the SDF fully responsible for any escalation.

The SDF had said Syrian government troops targeted their checkpoint near the Sheikh Han roundabout with two RPG rounds. State-run news agency SANA reported the Syrian army shot down two suicide drones launched from SDF-controlled areas toward government-held zones in eastern Aleppo countryside.

Despite a March agreement to integrate the SDF into Syrian government institutions, no progress has been made, and both sides continue to clash.

As well as most of eastern Syria, the SDF controls the Kurdish-majority areas of Aleppo city’s Ashrafiya and Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhoods.

The US-backed forces spearheaded the campaign against the Islamic State group (IS) which led to the extremists losing much of the territory they once controlled.

Islamic State group fears

Also in northern Syria, several members of a Customs Police patrol were injured Friday evening in an ambush.

Mazen Alloush, Director of Public Relations at the Syrian General Authority for Ports and Customs, said a patrol operating "in the Kuweires axis in the eastern Aleppo countryside came under fire from unknown assailants riding a motorcycle, resulting in a number of injuries of varying severity".

The casualties were hospitalised, and Alloush added that authorities had begun investigating the incident.

The attack was the second to target Customs Police in the Aleppo governorate in recent weeks. IS had claimed responsibility for an attack on a patrol earlier this month.

Syria’s government fears that IS is trying to make a comeback in the war-torn country after years of hit-and-run attacks, following its territorial losses in 2019.

Washington blamed a 13 December attack in central Syria, which killed two US soldiers and an American civilian, on a lone IS gunman. In retaliation, US forces conducted massive strikes targeting scores of IS targets in Syria.

Damascus has announced the arrest and killing of other senior officials in the extremist group in recent days.

On Friday, an explosion killed at least eight worshippers at a mosque in a predominantly Alawite area in the city of Homs, an attack later claimed by a shadowy Islamist group called Saraya Ansar al-Sunna.

The Syrian government – led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former jihadist himself – says the attack was a desperate aim to further destabilise the country, reeling from years of civil war.

Since ousting the Assad regime from power last year, Syria has seen several bloody sectarian episodes targeting the country’s Alawite and Druze heartlands, and a church bombing in June killed 25 people.