According to security sources, the Syrian National Army (SNA) initiated counter-moves against the already planned terror corridor of the PKK/YPG between Tel Rifaat and northeastern Syria.
Soon after anti-regime armed outfits captured Aleppo, the country’s second-biggest city, tensions started to escalate in northern Syria once again. The Syrian regime suffered vast territories before the advance of opposition forces and took the assistance of the PKK/YPG terrorist organization to revive opposition efforts.
Thus, the regime started to change the control of the territories into PKK/YPG forces that are located east of the Euphrates and transferred several PKK/YPG terrorists along with heavy weaponry deployed to Aleppo. The PKK/YPG saw that the regime lost territories as the beginning of a terror corridor, which the SNA interrupted via “Operation Dawn of Freedom.”
SNA cut off the link between Tel Rifaat and northeastern Syria by blocking the connectivity of routes between Raqqa and Aleppo to thwart the PKK/YPG efforts.
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Situation Currently in Tel Rifaat
Around February 2016, already having air support from Russia, the YPG/PKK terrorists took possession of Tel Rifaat and the surrounding villages, which displaced nearly 250,000 civilians all of whom went to seek refuge close to the Turkish border. It was from Tel Rifaat that YPG/PKK operated attacks against settlements in the spheres of Operation Euphrates Shield and Operation Olive Branch, as well as those held by Turkish security forces.
Regime forces then retreated from Tel Rifaat, owing to the advances made by anti-regime armed groups into Aleppo. The district thus came to be entrenched in the hands of PKK/YPG, where the group made it a point to let the whole Assad regime prove the self-declaration.