BEIRUT: The Kurdish administration in northern Syria on Sunday (Oct 13) 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.

Fighting raged, as Turkish-backed forces made significant progress along the border, despite an international outcry over the operation which has killed dozens of civilians and fighters, and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.



Marginalised for decades, Syria's minority Kurds carved out a de facto autonomous region across some 30 percent of the nation's territory after the devastating war broke out in 2011.

When the Islamic State militant group swept across the region in 2014, the Kurd-led SDF mounted a fierce defence of their heartland and became the US-led coalition's main partner on the ground.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself said the aim of the operation was to establish a "security zone" that would extend 30 to 35 kilometres into Syria and run from Kobane to Hasakeh - a stretch of 440 kilometres.