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The United States on Saturday urged the Syrian government and Kurdish authorities to return to negotiations after days of deadly clashes in the northern city of Aleppo.Conflicting reports emerged from the city, as authorities announced a halt to the fighting and said they began transferring Kurdish fighters out of Aleppo, but Kurdish forces denied the claims shortly after.An AFP correspondent saw at least five buses on Saturday carrying men leaving the Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsud district accompanied by security forces, with authorities saying they were fighters though Kurdish forces insisted they were “civilians who were forcibly displaced”.AFP could not independently verify the men’s identities.Another correspondent saw at least six buses entering the neighbourhood and leaving without anyone on board, with relative calm in the area.It came as US envoy Tom Barrack on Saturday met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, and afterwards issued a call for a “return to dialogue” with the Kurds in accordance with an integration agreement sealed last year.The violence in Aleppo erupted after efforts to integrate the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and military into the country’s new government stalled.Since the fighting began on Tuesday, at least 21 civilians have been killed, according to figures from both sides, while Aleppo’s governor said 155,000 people have been displaced.On Saturday evening, state television reported that Kurdish fighters “who announced their surrender… were transported by bus to the city of Tabaqa” in the Kurdish-controlled northeast.A Syrian security source had told AFP that the last Kurdish fighters had entrenched themselves in the area of al-Razi hospital in Sheikh Maqsud, before being evacuated by the authorities.Kurdish forces said in a statement that news of fighters being transferred was “entirely false” and that the people taken included “young civilians who were abducted and transferred to an unknown location”.- Residents waiting to return -On the outskirts of Sheikh Maqsud, families who were unable to flee the violence were leaving, accompanied by Syrian security forces, according to an AFP correspondent.Men were carrying their children on their backs as women and children wept, before boarding buses taking them to shelters.Dozens of young men in civilian clothing were separated from the rest, with security forces making them sit on the ground before being taken by bus to an unknown destination, according to the correspondent.A Syrian security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the young men were “fighters” being “transferred to Syrian detention centres”.At the entrance to the district, 60-year-old resident Imad al-Ahmad was waiting for permission to return home.”I left four days ago… I took refuge at my sister’s house,” he told AFP. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to return today.”Nahed Mohammad Qassab, a 40-year-old widow also waiting to return, said she left before the fighting to attend a funeral.”My three children are still inside, at my neighbour’s house. I want to get them out,” she said. The clashes, some of the most intense since Syria’s new Islamist authorities took power, present another challenge as the country struggles on a new path after the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.Both sides have blamed the other for starting the violence in Aleppo.- ‘Fierce’ resistance -A flight suspension at Aleppo airport was extended until further notice.The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, much of which they captured during Syria’s civil war and the fight against the Islamic State group. But Turkey, a close ally of neighbouring Syria’s new leaders, views its main component as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which agreed last year to end its four-decade armed struggle against Ankara.Turkey has launched successive offensives to push Kurdish forces from the frontier.Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast, accused Syrian authorities of “choosing the path of war” but said the Kurds remained committed to agreements reached with Damascus.The March integration agreement was meant to be implemented last year, but differences, including Kurdish demands for decentralised rule, have stymied progress as Damascus repeatedly rejected the idea.Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the renewed clashes cast doubt on the government’s ability to unite the country after years of civil war.Syria’s authorities have committed to protecting minorities, but sectarian bloodshed rocked the Alawite and Druze communities last year.

Rights groups expressed alarm on Saturday that Iranian authorities were intensifying a deadly crackdown under cover of an internet blackout, after another night of mass protests in the biggest demonstrations to face the Islamic republic in years.The two weeks of demonstrations have posed one of the biggest challenges to the theocratic authorities who have ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, although supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed defiance and blamed the United States.Following the movement’s largest protests yet on Thursday, new demonstrations took place late Friday, according to images verified by AFP and other videos published on social media.This was despite an internet shutdown imposed by the authorities, with monitor Netblocks saying Saturday evening that “Iran has now been offline for 48 hours”.Amnesty International said it was analysing “distressing reports that security forces have intensified their unlawful use of lethal force against protesters” since Thursday in an escalation “that has led to further deaths and injuries”.Norway-based Iran Human Rights group has said at least 51 people have been killed in the crackdown so far, warning the actual toll could be higher.It posted images it said were of bodies of people shot dead in the protests on the floor of Alghadir hospital in eastern Tehran. “These images provide further evidence of the excessive and lethal use of force against protesters,” IHR said. – ‘Seize city centres’ -In Tehran’s Saadatabad district, people banged pots and chanted anti-government slogans including “death to Khamenei” as cars honked in support, a video verified by AFP showed.Other images disseminated on social media and by Persian-language television channels outside Iran showed similarly large protests elsewhere in the capital, as well as in the eastern city of Mashhad, Tabriz in the north and the holy city of Qom.In the western city of Hamedan, a man was shown waving a shah-era Iranian flag featuring the lion and the sun amid fires and people dancing. The same flag briefly replaced the current Iranian flag over the country’s embassy in London, when protesters managed to reach the building’s balcony, witnesses told AFP. Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s ousted shah, hailed the “magnificent” turnout on Friday and urged Iranians to stage more targeted protests on Saturday and Sunday.”Our goal is no longer just to take to the streets. The goal is to prepare to seize and hold city centres,” Pahlavi said in a video message on social media.- ‘Big trouble’ -Pahlavi, whose father Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was ousted by the 1979 revolution and died in 1980, added he was also “preparing to return to my homeland” at a time that he believed was “very near”.Authorities say several members of the security forces have been killed, and Khamenei in a defiant speech on Friday lashed out at “vandals” and accused the United States of fuelling the protests.On Thursday and Friday, an AFP journalist in Tehran saw streets deserted and plunged into darkness ahead of any protests. On Valiasr avenue, one of Tehran’s main streets, businesses shuttered unusually early.”The area is not safe,” said a cafe manager as he prepared to close at around 4:00 pm. An AFP reporter saw shop windows broken, as well as security forces deploying.State TV on Saturday broadcast images of funerals for several members of the security forces killed in the protests, including a large gathering in the southern city of Shiraz.It also aired images of buildings, including a mosque, on fire.Iran’s army said in a statement that it would “vigorously protect and safeguard national interests” against an “enemy seeking to disrupt order and peace”.National security council chief Ali Larijani said in comments broadcast late Friday that “we are in the middle of a war”, with “these incidents being directed from outside”.The Norway-based Hengaw rights group said it had confirmed five Kurdish men had been shot dead by security forces in the western city of Kermanshah on Thursday and another man, a former bodybuilding champion, killed in the northern city of Rasht on Friday. Global leaders have urged restraint from Iranian authorities, with European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen saying Europe backed Iranians’ mass protests and condemned the “violent repression” against the demonstrators.On Saturday, the start of the working week in Iran, one man in Tehran said he was unable to check his work email.”This is the price to pay before the victory of the people,” he said.US President Donald Trump again refused on Friday to rule out new military action against Iran after Washington backed and joined Israel’s 12-day war against the Islamic republic in June.”Iran’s in big trouble. It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago,” Trump said.

A protester briefly replaced the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran on its London embassy with a former flag, flown before 1979, during a demonstration Saturday, witnesses told AFP.A video posted to social media showed a man on the balcony of the embassy, near Hyde Park, replace the country’s current flag with one used during the rule of the ousted shah to cheers from hundreds of demonstrators below.The flag — tri-coloured, with a lion and sun, surrounded by a wreath and crown — was a ceremonial one used in Iran before the Islamic revolution.It stayed in place for several minutes before being removed, witnesses on site told AFP.”Democracy for Iran. Shah Reza Pahlavi. Justice for Iran,” chanted the demonstrators, referring to the son of the late shah of Iran who now lives in the United States. Some also held placards reading “Free Iran”.”I’m here to support Iranians, my loved ones inside Iran — they’ve been protesting for two weeks today,” said one demonstrator, Taraneh, 33, who declined to give her last name. “The internet has been shut down … We get very little information from inside Iran,” she added.”But, you know, people are still in the streets. They’re being attacked. The Islamic Republic is murdering people,” she said. “I want this regime to go. I just want to be able to go back.”London police, in an online post, said that after the flag incident “additional officers are being deployed to prevent any disorder” and to protect the Iranian embassy.They said they had arrested two people, “one for aggravated trespass and assault on an emergency worker and one for aggravated trespass” and they were seeking another another individual for “trespass”.Iran has been roiled by street protests since December 28, which have since taken hold nationwide.Initially triggered by a devaluation of the country’s currency and growing concerns over the cost of living, they have since spiralled into mass demonstrations calling for an end to the Islamic Republic.Iranian authorities have cut off internet access in the country, and NGOs and monitoring organisations say they fear that blackout will be used to crack down on the protesters.At least 51 people have been killed so far, including nine children, with hundreds wounded, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.

Syrian authorities on Saturday began transferring Kurdish fighters from the country’s second city Aleppo to areas they control in the country’s northeast, state television reported, after days of deadly clashes.The violence in Aleppo erupted after efforts to integrate the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and military into the country’s new government stalled.Since the fighting began on Tuesday, at least 21 civilians have been killed, according to figures from both sides, while Aleppo’s governor said 155,000 people have been displaced.On Saturday evening, state television reported that Kurdish fighters “who announced their surrender… were transported by bus to the city of Tabaqa” in the Kurdish-controlled northeast.An AFP correspondent saw at least five buses on Saturday carrying fighters leaving the Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsud district accompanied by security forces.Their departure came as US envoy Tom Barrack on Saturday met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, and afterwards issued a call for a “return to dialogue” with the Kurds in accordance with an integration agreement sealed last year.In a statement to the official SANA news agency, the military announced earlier on Saturday “a halt to all military operations in the Sheikh Maqsud neighbourhood”.A Syrian security source had told AFP that the last Kurdish fighters had entrenched themselves in the area of al-Razi hospital in Sheikh Maqsud, before being evacuated by authorities.On the outskirts of Sheikh Maqsud, families who were unable to flee the violence were leaving, accompanied by Syrian security forces, according to an AFP correspondent.Men were carrying their children on their backs as women and children wept, before entering buses taking them to shelters.Dozens of young men in civilian clothing were separated from the rest, with security forcing them to sit on the ground, heads down, before being taken by bus to an unknown destination, according to the correspondent.Government forces began striking the district overnight after a deadline elapsed for Kurdish fighters to withdraw during a ceasefire.- Residents waiting to return -At the entrance to the district, 60-year-old resident Imad al-Ahmad waited for permission from the security forces to return home.”I left four days ago… I took refuge at my sister’s house,” he told AFP. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to return today.”Nahed Mohammad Qassab, a 40-year-old widow also waiting to return, said she left before the fighting to attend a funeral.”My three children are still inside, at my neighbour’s house. I want to get them out,” she said. The clashes, some of the most intense since Syria’s new Islamist authorities took power, present yet another challenge as the country struggles to forge a new path after the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.Both sides have blamed the other for starting the violence in Aleppo.- ‘Fierce’ resistance -Kurdish forces earlier reported coming under artillery and drone attacks, and claimed on social media to be mounting a “fierce and ongoing resistance”.The army said three soldiers had been killed by Kurdish fighters, while state television accused them of launching drones at residential areas of Aleppo.A flight suspension at Aleppo airport was extended until late Saturday.The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, and were key to the 2019 territorial defeat of the Islamic State group. But Turkey, a close ally of neighbouring Syria’s new leaders, views its main component as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which agreed last year to end its four-decade armed struggle against Ankara.Turkey has launched successive offensives to push Kurdish forces from the frontier.Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast, accused Syrian authorities of “choosing the path of war” by attacking Kurdish districts and of “seeking to put an end to the agreements that have been reached”.”We are committed to them and we are seeking to implement them,” she told AFP.The March integration agreement was meant to be implemented last year, but differences, including Kurdish demands for decentralised rule, have stymied progress.Ahmad welcomed on X a proposal by international mediators to evacuate the Kurdish forces from Sheikh Maqsud, but on condition that the local Kurdish population is protected. Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the renewed clashes cast doubt on the government’s ability to unite the country after years of civil war.Syria’s authorities have committed to protecting minorities, but sectarian bloodshed rocked the Alawite and Druze communities last year.

The Syrian army said on Saturday that it was halting military operations in an Aleppo neighbourhood following days of clashes, but Kurdish forces there maintained they were still under attack, with an AFP correspondent nearby reporting sporadic gunfire.The violence in Syria’s second city erupted after efforts to integrate the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and military into the country’s new government stalled.Since the fighting began on Tuesday, at least 21 civilians have been killed, according to figures from both sides, while Aleppo’s governor said 155,000 people have been displaced. In a statement to the official SANA news agency, the military announced “a halt to all military operations in the Sheikh Maqsud neighbourhood” from 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) Saturday, adding that Kurdish forces there would be “transferred” to the Kurdish-controlled city of Tabaqa in northeastern Syria.But the Kurdish forces said their fighters were still repelling a “fierce attack”, and called the army statement “a blatant attempt to mislead public opinion”.Government forces began striking the district overnight after a deadline elapsed for Kurdish fighters to withdraw during a ceasefire.Syria’s army said earlier on Saturday that it had completed a “security sweep” of Sheikh Maqsud, while urging residents to stay in their homes due to the continued presence of Kurdish fighters.The Kurdish forces, however, said claims that the government now controlled the vast majority of the neighbourhood were “false and misleading”.- Residents waiting to return -At the entrance to the district, 60-year-old resident Imad al-Ahmad waited for permission from the security forces to return home. “I left four days ago… I took refuge at my sister’s house,” he told AFP. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to return today.” Nahed Mohammad Qassab, a 40-year-old widow also waiting to return, said she left before the fighting to attend a funeral. “My three children are still inside, at my neighbour’s house. I want to get them out,” she said. The clashes, some of the most intense since Syria’s new Islamist authorities took power, present yet another challenge as the country struggles to forge a new path after the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.Both sides have blamed the other for starting the violence in Aleppo.- ‘Fierce’ resistance -Kurdish forces earlier reported coming under artillery and drone attacks, and claimed on social media to be mounting a “fierce and ongoing resistance”.The army said three soldiers had been killed by Kurdish fighters, while state television accused them of launching drones at residential areas of Aleppo.A flight suspension at Aleppo airport was extended until late Saturday.The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, and were key to the 2019 territorial defeat of the Islamic State group. But Turkey, a close ally of neighbouring Syria’s new leaders, views its main component as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which agreed last year to end its four-decade armed struggle against Ankara.Turkey has launched successive offensives to push Kurdish forces from the frontier.Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast, accused Syrian authorities of “choosing the path of war” by attacking Kurdish districts and of “seeking to put an end to the agreements that have been reached”.”We are committed to them and we are seeking to implement them,” she told AFP.The March integration agreement was meant to be implemented last year, but differences, including Kurdish demands for decentralised rule, have stymied progress.US envoy Tom Barrack said Saturday he had discussed the situation with Jordan’s foreign minister, with both parties expressing a desire for “consolidating the ceasefire, ensuring the peaceful withdrawal of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from Aleppo, and guaranteeing” civilians’ safety.They also called for the implementation of the integration agreement.Ahmad welcomed on X a proposal by international mediators to evacuate the Kurdish forces from Sheikh Maqsud, but on condition that the local Kurdish population is protected. Nanar Hawach, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the renewed clashes cast doubt on the government’s ability to sew the country back together after 14 years of civil war.Syria’s authorities have committed to protecting minorities, but sectarian bloodshed rocked the Alawite and Druze communities last year.

Major Iranian cities were gripped overnight by new mass rallies denouncing the Islamic republic, as activists on Saturday expressed fear authorities were intensifying their suppression of the demonstrations under cover of an internet blackout.The two weeks of protests have posed one of the biggest challenges to the theocratic authorities who have ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, although supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed defiance and blamed the United States.Following the movement’s largest protests yet on Thursday, new demonstrations took place late Friday, according to images verified by AFP and other videos published on social media.This was despite an internet shutdown imposed by the authorities, with monitor Netblocks saying early Saturday that “metrics show the nationwide internet blackout remains in place at 36 hours”.The blackout has sparked fears among activists that authorities are now violently cracking down on the protests, with less chance the proof will reach the outside world.Amnesty International said it was analysing “distressing reports that security forces have intensified their unlawful use of lethal force against protesters” since Thursday in an escalation “that has led to further deaths and injuries”.Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi warned on Friday that security forces could be preparing to commit a “massacre under the cover of a sweeping communications blackout”, and said she had already received reports of hundreds of people being treated for eye injuries at a single Tehran hospital.Rights groups have accused security forces of deliberately targeting protesters’ eyes with birdshot in previous protest waves in Iran.Norway-based Iran Human Rights group has said at least 51 people have been killed in the crackdown so far, but warned the actual toll could be higher.Iranian authorities are using the “most blatant tools of repression”, prize-winning filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Jafar Panahi said, pointing to the internet blackout.”Experience has shown that resorting to such measures is intended to conceal the violence inflicted during the suppression of protests,” they added.- ‘Seize city centres’ -In Tehran’s Saadatabad district, people banged pots and chanted anti-government slogans including “death to Khamenei” as cars honked in support, a video verified by AFP showed.Other images disseminated on social media and by Persian-language television channels outside Iran showed similarly large protests elsewhere in the capital, as well as in the eastern city of Mashhad, Tabriz in the north and the holy city of Qom.In the western city of Hamedan, a man was shown waving a shah-era Iranian flag featuring the lion and the sun amid fires and people dancing.In the Pounak district of northern Iran, people were shown dancing round a fire in the middle of a highway, while in the Vakilabad district of Mashhad, a city home to one of the holiest shrines in Shiite Islam, people marched down an avenue chanting “death to Khamenei”. It was not possible to immediately verify the videos.Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s ousted shah, hailed the “magnificent” turnout on Friday and urged Iranians to stage more targeted protests on Saturday and Sunday.”Our goal is no longer just to take to the streets. The goal is to prepare to seize and hold city centres,” Pahlavi said in a video message on social media.- ‘Big trouble’ -Pahlavi, whose father Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was ousted by the 1979 revolution and died in 1980, added he was also “preparing to return to my homeland” at a time that he believed was “very near”.Authorities say several members of the security forces have been killed, and Khamenei in a defiant speech on Friday lashed out at “vandals” and accused the United States of instigating the protests.State TV on Saturday broadcast images of funerals for several members of the security forces killed in the protests, including a large gathering in the southern city of Shiraz.Iran’s army said in a statement that it would “vigorously protect and safeguard national interests” against an “enemy seeking to disrupt order and peace”.National security council chief Ali Larijani said in comments broadcast late Friday that “we are in the middle of a war”, with “these incidents being directed from outside”.US President Donald Trump again refused on Friday to rule out new military action against Iran after Washington backed and joined Israel’s 12-day war against the Islamic republic in June.”Iran’s in big trouble. It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago,” Trump said.