SDF

Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have regained control of a key border town in northeastern Syria, according to the DPA, citing the UK-based Syrian Human Rights Monitoring Center.

According to information from the centre, SDF fighters seized the city of Ras al-Ain from Turkish forces and their allies, who entered the city two days ago.

Turkey on July 2 strongly condemned the United Nation's "Action Plan" with the SDF, an umbrella organization manned mostly by terrorists from the YPG, the Syrian branch of the outlawed PKK.

Russia has issued a stern warning to U.S. forces and their allies in Syria, saying it has deployed Russian special forces alongside Syrian government troops in the battle for the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province and that Moscow would retaliate if the Russians come under fire.

Nearly a dozen Syrian rebels have been killed in hit-and-run clashes with a U.S.-backed alliance dominated by Kurdish forces in the country's north, a monitoring group said on July 18.

Rebels were locked in their second day of fighting on July 18 with units from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) around the village of Ain Daqna.

United States military advisers are operating inside Raqqa, the Syria bastion of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a U.S. official has said.

U.S.-backed fighters have breached the ancient wall of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa, marking new progress in the battle to rout the militants from their most important strongholds, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

US-backed fighters pierced jihadist-held Raqqa from the south for the first time on Sunday, crossing the Euphrates River to enter a new part of the Syrian city, a monitor said, writes The Guardian.
The Syrian Democratic Forces have spent months closing in on the Islamic State group's bastion Raqqa and entered the city's east and west for the first time last month.

The Turkish government wants to set up a "joint mechanism" with the U.S. to collect arms sent to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) by the U.S. after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is defeated, Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Işık has said. 

Washington is in a "tactical" relationship with the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia, which Ankara considers as linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Işık in a letter, according to ministry sources.

Russia on June 19 warned it would track U.S.-led coalition aircraft in central Syria as "targets" and halted an incident-prevention hotline with Washington after U.S.forces downed a Syrian jet.

Moscow has only once before suspended the hotline, which was established in October 2015 to prevent conflict between the different forces operating in Syrian airspace.