Agencies DAMASCUS

Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has reached an agreement with rebel factions to come together as one force under the Defence Ministry, according to the new Syrian general administration.

A meeting between al-Sharaa and the heads of the groups “ended in an agreement on the dissolution of all the groups and their integration under the supervision of the ministry of defence”, said a statement by the new administration on Tuesday.

However, the Kurdish-led and United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) group in northeastern Syria are  not part of the deal just announced.

Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir had said last week that the ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Bashar al-Assad’s army.

“Since the fall of the Assad regime, this is perhaps the most important development that has happened in Syria,” said Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Damascus. He explained that immediately after the fall of al-Assad’s regime, opposition fighters from across the country streamed into Damascus, with some of them claiming different territories of the capital.

“The main fear was how these groups that had been fighting against the regime during the course of 13 years of the civil war – groups that are heavily armed – how they are going to merge and unite,” Serdar said.

Meanwhile, a Reuters report  from Ankara, quoting Turkiye’s military, said that the Turkish military had killed 21 Kurdish militants in northern Syria and Iraq.

In a statement, Turkiye’s  defence ministry said on Wednesday that 20 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Syrian Kurdish YPG militants, who were preparing to launch an attack, were killed in northern Syria, while one militant was killed in northern Iraq.

"Our operations will continue effectively and resolutely," the ministry added.

The PKK, designated as a terrorist organization by Turkiye, the European Union, and the United States, began its armed insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

Turkiye regards the YPG, the leading force within the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as an extension of the PKK and similarly, classifies it as a terrorist group.