The Internal Security of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), also known as Asayish, took control of six government buildings in a security square controlled by the regime forces in the northeastern city of Qamishli, local news feeds said on 14 April.

The SDF media office said on Facebook that Asayish took control of a number of government institutions in the Cultural Center street in Qamishli city, which it described as “important points.”

The local al-Sharqiya Correspondent news network said that Asayish had seized the buildings of the Finance Directorate, the Teachers Union, the Syrian Grain Foundation, the Revolutionary Youth Union building, the Cultural Center, and the Educational Complex affiliated with the regime forces in the city.

Enab Baladi’s correspondent in Qamishli confirmed that the regime forces now control just a few buildings in the security square: the Court, the building of the District Directorate, the Technical Services Division, and the Directorate of Agriculture.

The escalation by the US-backed forces came in retaliation for the regime’s siege of the SDF-held areas in the city of Aleppo. The SDF has imposed a siege on the security squares of regime forces in Qamishli and al-Hasakah cities.

A well-informed source at Qamishli Airport told Enab Baladi that Russian officers met with SDF senior commanders on 12 April, in the presence of the commander of the Syrian regime’s Turtub regiment, in a search to reach a settlement to lift the siege on the security squares.

The source confirmed that the two sides met twice.

The SDF besieged the security squares five days ago, seeking to push regime forces to lift the siege on the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods in Aleppo.

Tens of residents and employees of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) demonstrated on 9 April in Aleppo due to the siege imposed by the Fourth Division on their areas.

The Fourth Division stationed in the vicinity of the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, which is under the influence of the Autonomous Administration in Aleppo, is preventing trucks loaded with flour from entering the neighborhood’s bakeries, for the seventh consecutive day, in conjunction with a living crisis in the region.

Sheikh Maqsoud is the only neighborhood under the control of the SDF in Aleppo after several military campaigns launched by Turkey towards the areas of influence of the Autonomous Administration in northern Syria, which led to the reduction of its influence to small neighborhoods in Aleppo and a number of villages in the northern countryside of Aleppo.