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Syria continues deploying troops in Hasaka: State media

The photo, released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on October 26, 2019, shows a convoy of the Syrian army on a road between the northeastern cities of Tal Tamr and Ras al-Ayn in Hasaka province. (Via AFP)

Syria continues to deploy troops to the border with Turkey in the northeastern province of Hasaka as part of plans to counter the Turkish aggression and defend the locals, state media say.

Syria’s official news agency SANA reported on Monday that the Syrian Arab Army sent out units to the town of Tal Tamr. The 90-kilometer deployment area straddles the northeastern town of Ras al-Ayn and Qamishli.

SANA said the stationing of Syrian troops was towards the country’s east in completion of their deployment to the rest of the border with Turkey.

Kurdish militants of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) started to withdraw on Sunday from the borderline.

On October 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed a memorandum of understanding, where they asserted that Kurdish militants from the People's Protection Units (YPG), which constitutes the backbone of the SDF, must withdraw from the Turkish-controlled "safe zone" in northeastern Syria within 150 hours, after which period Ankara and Moscow will run joint patrols around the area.

The announcement was made hours before a US-brokered five-day truce between Turkish and Kurdish-led forces was due to expire.

On October 9, Turkish military forces and Ankara-backed militants launched a long-threatened cross-border invasion of northeastern Syria in a declared attempt to push YPG militants away from border areas.

Ankara views the US-backed YPG as a terrorist organization tied to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region in Turkey since 1984.

Two civilians killed in bombing in Raqqa, Aleppo

SANA also reported on Monday that two civilians were killed and an unspecified number of others were injured in a bomb attack in the northern Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Raqqa.

The news agency said a booby-trapped motorcycle exploded in front of a bread production facility in the border town of Tal Abyad in Raqqa, leaving one civilian dead and "others" wounded, also causing material damage to the site.

Local sources in Aleppo said "one civilian was martyred and others sustained wounds of varying severity when an explosive device planted in the Al-Rai town went off."


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