ERBIL, Kurdistan Region-- At least 6 army soldiers were killed in Syria's Kurdish controlled Hasakah on Sunday as clashes continued late into the night between Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and government backed forces in the city.
The YPG announced it had surrounded an army base in the city and urged the soldiers to lay down their arms and surrender to the Kurdish fighters. The group said it had taken 20 soldiers prisoner earlier on Sunday in the city and called on the remaining troops to abandon their positions.
Kurdish media outlets close to YPG said Sunday the 6 soldiers were killed in Khweran neighborhood in Hasakah after their armored vehicle was hit by YPG artillery.
“To all regime militiamen surrounded in the city, you are a target of our snipers and our guns,” read a YPG leaflet sent to regime soldiers. “Our forces will head into the city in large convoys and therefore we advise you to lay down your arms and hand yourselves over to the nearest security center,”
The leaflet promises the soldiers that they “will be treated with respect and like brothers or they should consider themselves dead,” if they refuse to surrender.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported earlier that around 43 people had been killed until Sunday since the deadly clashes erupted in Hasakah on Friday.
Hasakah with a population of around 200,000 is divided among Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and Armenians. Parts of the city have been administrated by the pro-government National Defense Force which now is pressured by the YPG to lay down arms.
The United States regards the YPG as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State militants and has warned Syrian army "not to interfere with coalition forces or our [US] partners," after Syrian aircrafts flew over Hasakah on Thursday.
The YPG has largely avoided clashes with the Syrian regime since the start of the civil war in that country and the regime has given the Kurdish areas a degree of autonomy, but both sides have engaged in sporadic clashes on several occasions.
