The U.S. withdrew its forces from military observation post south of Ayn Al-Arab in northern Syria, according to security sources.
Earlier, U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that the U.S. is preparing to evacuate about 1,000 U.S. troops from northern Syria.
The decision came a week after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would pull back its forces from the Syrian border after a telephone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
After the major shift in alliances, Syria’s Kurds said Syrian government forces agreed Sunday to help them to halt Turkey’s offensive against them.
The Kurdish officials in a statement on Facebook said it had brokered the agreement with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government to counter Turkey’s ongoing push, which has drawn widespread condemnation.
Syrian state media also reported that government forces had been deployed to the north, along the border with Turkey.
In a separate development on Sunday, according to Kurdish officials , nearly 800 relatives of foreign Islamic State(IS) members had escaped from Ain Issa, a camp in the north, when clashes raged nearby.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s National Defense Ministry said a total of 525 PKK/PYD-YPG terrorists have been “neutralized” since the start of Turkey’s anti-terror operation in northern Syria.
Turkish authorities often use the word “neutralized” to imply the terrorists in question surrendered or were killed or captured.
Ankara wants to eliminate terrorist elements of the PKK and its Syrian offshoot, the PYD/YPG, from the region.
In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK — listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union — has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants.
