US-backed Kurdish Fighters Say Battles with Tribesmen in Eastern Syria that Killed Dozens Have Ended

A fighter of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) loads a machine gun belt onto a turret along a technical vehicle as others deploy to impose a curfew in the town of al-Busayrah in Syria's northeastern Deir Ezzor province on September 4, 2023. (Photo by Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP)
A fighter of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) loads a machine gun belt onto a turret along a technical vehicle as others deploy to impose a curfew in the town of al-Busayrah in Syria's northeastern Deir Ezzor province on September 4, 2023. (Photo by Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP)
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US-backed Kurdish Fighters Say Battles with Tribesmen in Eastern Syria that Killed Dozens Have Ended

A fighter of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) loads a machine gun belt onto a turret along a technical vehicle as others deploy to impose a curfew in the town of al-Busayrah in Syria's northeastern Deir Ezzor province on September 4, 2023. (Photo by Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP)
A fighter of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) loads a machine gun belt onto a turret along a technical vehicle as others deploy to impose a curfew in the town of al-Busayrah in Syria's northeastern Deir Ezzor province on September 4, 2023. (Photo by Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP)

A US-backed Syrian force declared its operations in eastern Syria completed Friday after almost two weeks of fighting with local tribesmen left dozens of people dead.
The Syrian Democratic Forces said the fighting ended with its recapture of areas in Deir el-Zour province that the Kurdish-led force had lost during the battles triggered by the arrest of a rival US-backed commander.
The clashes were among the worst in recent years in the region along the border with Iraq where hundreds of US troops have been based since 2015 to help in the fight against the ISIS extremist group, The Associated Press said.
Many feared the fighting between the rival Syrian militias that broke out on Aug. 27 would affect the efforts to combat ISIS. Earlier this week, the SDF took control of the areas it lost during the recent clashes.
The SDF said the fighting left 25 of its fighters dead in addition to 29 members of rival groups and tribal gunmen. It said nine civilians were also killed and accused government forces of helping to incite the violence. The Kurdish-led force said it captured 21 fighters.
Earlier Friday, the SDF said its fighters had detained a senior official with the ISIS group who was in charge of financing and arming sleeper cells.
Despite the ISIS group's defeat in Syria in March 2019, ISIS sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in Syria and in neighboring Iraq. The extremists once controlled wide areas and declared a caliphate in the two countries.
The SDF said its members, with the support of the US-led coalition against the ISIS group and the Counter Terrorism Group in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, apprehended senior ISIS financier Abdul-Ghafour Taber al-Diab, also known as Abu Amir.
He was detained Thursday in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, which was once seen as the capital of the extremists, according to the SDF.
“He was responsible for financing the ISIS terrorist cells and their terrorist acts in the region, supplying them with weapons,” the group said in a terse statement.
In other parts of Syria, hundreds of people took part in anti-government protests in the southern city of Sweida, tearing down pictures of President Bashar Assad from a state institution. The demonstrations were sparked by worsening living conditions and inflation that surged after Assad’s decision last month to double public sector wages and pensions.
The protests in Sweida province, where Druze people represent the majority of the population, are now in their third week. Surging inflation and the war-torn country’s spiraling economy initially drove the demonstrations but quickly shifted to marchers calling for the fall of Assad’s government.
Sweida province has largely avoided the fighting of Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has killed a half-million people, wounded hundreds of thousands and left parts of the country destroyed. The conflict has displaced half of Syria's prewar population of 23 million, including more than 5 million who are refugees outside the country.
The Druze made up about 5% of Syria’s prewar population and are split between supporters and opponents of President Bashar Assad



Villagers in Southern Lebanon Begin to Return Home as Israeli Army Withdraws Under Ceasefire Deal

Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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Villagers in Southern Lebanon Begin to Return Home as Israeli Army Withdraws Under Ceasefire Deal

Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Israeli forces withdrew Tuesday from border villages in southern Lebanon under a deadline spelled out in a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, but stayed in five strategic overlook locations inside Lebanon.

Top Lebanese leaders denounced the continued presence of the Israeli troops as an occupation and a violation of the deal, maintaining that Israel was required to make a full withdrawal by Tuesday. The troops' presence is also a sore point with the Hezbollah group, which has demanded action from the authorities.

Lebanese soldiers moved into the areas from which the Israeli troops withdrew and began clearing roadblocks set up by Israeli forces and checking for unexploded ordnance. They blocked the main road leading to villages, preventing anyone from entering while the military was looking for any explosives left behind.

Most of the villagers waited by the roadside for permission to go and check on their homes but scores pushed aside the roadblocks to march in. Elsewhere, the army allowed the residents to enter.

Many of their houses were demolished during the more than yearlong conflict or in the two months after November’s ceasefire agreement when Israeli forces were still occupying the area.

In the border village of Kfar Kila, people were stunned by the amount of destruction, with entire sections of houses wiped out. Some knelt on the ground and prayed in the village's main square.

“What I’m seeing is beyond belief. I am in a state of shock,” said Khodor Suleiman, a construction contractor, pointing to his destroyed home on a hilltop. “I am feeling a mixture of happiness and pain." said Suleiman, who had last been in Kfar Kila six months ago.

In Kfar Kila's main square, Lebanese troops deployed as a military bulldozer removed rubble from the street. As people gathered in the square, a young man ran in, screaming that he had found two men alive on the edge of the village.

An ambulance rushed to the distant area and then quickly drove away from the village, preventing anyone from looking inside. Residents said later the two young men were members of Hezbollah and had been hiding out inside a grocery shop for three months until they were found on Tuesday.

Abbas Fadallah from Kfar Kila said that his family’s house that was built 105 years ago was now a pile of debris. Fadallah said he is happy to return but sad because “many civilians were martyred.”

Kfar Kila’s mayor, Hassan Sheet, told The Associated Press that 90% of the village homes are completely destroyed while the remaining 10% are damaged. “There are no homes nor buildings standing,” he said, adding that rebuilding will start from scratch.

Also Tuesday, Ayman Jaber entered Mhaibib, a village perched on a hill close to the Israeli border that was leveled by a series of explosions on Oct. 16. The Israeli army had released a video showing blasts ripping through the village in the Marjayoun region.

The Associated Press interviewed Jaber and his family early November when Jaber said he worried Israel would again set up a permanent presence in southern Lebanon and that the home he had built over the past six years for himself, his wife and their two sons, would be gone.

That worry, at least, turned out to be well-founded. “Not a single house in the village is still standing,” Jaber said. “It is like an earthquake wiped out the village.”

“The situation breaks my heart,” Jaber said, as he stood inside the village’s cemetery. “They dug up the graves and opened the vaults. I don’t understand what security threat the dead posed to them.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli army “will stay in a buffer zone in Lebanon in five control posts" to guard against any ceasefire violations by Hezbollah. He also said the army had erected new posts on the Israeli side of the border, and sent reinforcements there.

“We are determined to provide full security to every northern community,” Katz said.

However, Lebanon's three top officials — the country's president, prime minister and parliament speaker — in a joint statement said that Israel’s continued presence at the five locations was in violation of the ceasefire agreement. They called on the UN Security Council to take action to force a complete Israeli withdrawal.

“The continued Israeli presence in any inch of Lebanese territory is an occupation, with all the legal consequences that result from that according to international legitimacy,” the statement said.

The Israeli military presence was also criticized in a joint statement by the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of the UN peacekeeping force in the country, Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro.

The two, however, warned that this should not “overshadow the tangible progress that has been made” since the ceasefire agreement.

Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after a deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in late September.

More than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon and more than 1 million were displaced at the height of the conflict, more than 100,000 of whom have not been able to return home. On the Israeli side, dozens of people were killed and some 60,000 are displaced.

Hussein Fares left Kfar Kila in October 2023 for the southern city of Nabatiyeh. When the fighting intensified in September he moved with his family to the city of Sidon, where they were given a room in a school housing displaced people.

“I have been waiting for a year and a half to return,” said Fares who has a pickup truck and works as a laborer. He said he understands that the reconstruction process will take time.