Kurds announce deal with Damascus on troop deployment near Turkish border

The Kurdish administration in northern Syria on Sunday announced a deal with the Damascus government on a Syrian troop deployment near the border with Turkey to confront Ankara's offensive. "In order to prevent and confront this aggression, an agreement has been reached with the Syrian government... so that the Syrian army can deploy along the Syrian-Turkish border to assist the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)," the Kurdish administration said in a statement on its Facebook page.

Earlier Syria's state news agency SANA said the army was sending troops to the north to "confront the Turkish aggression", without giving further details. In their statement the Kurds said that the agreement struck with the Damascus government "paves the way to liberate the rest of the Syrian cities occupied by the Turkish army such as Afrin", a majority Kurdish enclave in the northwest. On Sunday Turkish forces and their proxies pushed deeper into Syria, on the fifth day of the offensive, as Washington announced it was withdrawing its 1,000 troops from the country's north.