In an attack by a Turkish drone, 11 civilians, including six children, were killed in an area controlled by the Kurds in Northern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The attack came a day after Islamist-led rebels ousted President Bashar al-Assad in a lightning offensive.

Fighting broke out on Saturday in Manbij, a Kurdish-held city near the Syrian-Turkish border, between rebel groups, one backed by the US and the other by Turkey.

At least 22 members of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been killed in Manbij and its surroundings, and 40 others have been wounded, the Kurdish group said, as reported by Western media.

The clashes preceded a meeting on Sunday between Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin and his Turkish counterpart, Defense Minister Yasar Güler, writes the New York Times.

"Pro-Turkish factions (SNA) ... captured large areas of the city of Manbij in Eastern Aleppo, following violent clashes with the Military Council in Manbij," the Observatory said.

The council is affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces, the de facto army of the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration that controls much of northeastern Syria.

Earlier this month, the Observatory said pro-Turkish fighters captured the strategic northern town of Tal Rifat from Kurdish forces, in parallel with a major rebel offensive against the Assad regime.

Turkish forces and their proxies have controlled swathes of territory in northern Syria since 2016, when they began attacking Kurdish fighters they associate with a group that has waged a decades-long war against the Turkish state.

Ankara views the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened a new ground invasion to take control of three Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria, including Tal Rifat.

Turkey said on Sunday it wanted to help "guarantee security" in Syria after the fall of Assad and would work to prevent Kurdish forces from expanding their influence in Syria. Ankara opposes any disintegration of Syria, including Kurdish autonomy.

The commander of Kurdish forces in Syria hailed the "historic" moments of the fall of Bashar al-Assad's "authoritarian regime" on Sunday.
"In Syria we are living historic moments as we witness the fall of the authoritarian regime in Damascus," Mazloum Abdi, who heads the Syrian Democratic Forces, which controls parts of northeastern Syria, told Telegram.
Syria's Kurdish minority, which has established a semi-autonomous administration in northeastern Syria, was excluded from previous rounds of talks between the government and the opposition in Geneva under UN auspices.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey could launch a new offensive in northern Syria to create new safe zones along its border, after saying on Friday he would discuss with President-elect Donald Trump a possible withdrawal of remaining US troops from Syria.

Turkey and its paramilitary forces in Syria "want to take advantage of the current chaos to redraw the map in Turkey's favor," reports the New York Times assessment of insiders.

"They are using Damascus' preoccupation with other issues to continue to expand their influence in this time of chaos and to undermine the Kurds in Syria, to ensure that their power is weakened," reports the New York Times.

The power vacuum created by the fall of Assad presents an opportunity for Turkey to increase its power and influence in Syria in general, but especially along its border.

By the way, Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1970 to 2000, gave shelter to the Turkish Kurdish militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for several years.

However, this aid was intended to make the position of Turkey more difficult, and not because of any sympathy of Damascus towards the Kurds.

In the civil war in Syria in 2011, the Kurds did not side with the Assad regime, nor did they support the opposition, which they considered an opponent of Kurdish autonomy, just as the then authorities in Damascus were also opponents.

As some Syrian rebels became more Islamist-oriented, Syrian Kurds were increasingly concerned.

Although the Syrian Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims, they are more mainstream in their religious beliefs than the Islamist factions, the most militant among them being the secular supporters of the Democratic Union Party (PID), which shares a kind of utopian communist ideology with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). ).

An additional problem is the different interests of the United States and Turkey in Syria.

Turkey and the United States are NATO members and together celebrated the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but their interests diverge over support for the Kurds in northern Syria, far from the capital Damascus.

The Kurds have been a key US partner in the fight against Islamic State, an Islamist group that seized large swaths of territory at the start of Syria's civil war in 2011.

The Kurds now control much of northeastern Syria under an autonomous civilian administration. About 900 US troops are deployed to Syria to support Kurdish forces, although several thousand were withdrawn near the end of Trump's first term.

There are about two million Kurds in Syria, or ten percent of the country's population. They speak Kurdish (a Kirimanji dialect), but most also speak Arabic, and many Kurds have at least partially assimilated into Arab society.

Most are Sunni Muslims. About a third of them live in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains north of Aleppo, and the same number along the Turkish border in the Jazira.

Another ten percent of them are deployed near Jarabulus northeast of Aleppo, and 10-15 percent in Haya al-Akrad (Kurdish Quarter) on the outskirts of Damascus.

The Kurdish people are an ethnic minority group without an official state. Before the First World War, the Kurds lived a nomadic lifestyle until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, after which they found themselves in several newly created states.

Today there are about 25-30 million Kurds, most of whom live in a region that stretches across parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Armenia.