Deir el-Zour in eastern Syria on Wednesday saw another flare-up of violence between the PKK terrorist group's Syrian wing YPG and Arab tribes, which face oppression from the terrorists.

In the early hours of Wednesday, tribes launched attacks in seven different locations, all in the countryside, against the terrorist group. The tribes attacked checkpoints manned by terrorists and their headquarters in the villages of Busayra, Ibrahiyya, Alharija, Tayyaneh, Abu Hamam, Gazanic, Kashkiyya, Dhiban and Latwa. Dhiban is a few kilometers from the al-Omar oil field that houses a base housing the PKK members and U.S. troops.

Deir el-Zour is a predominantly Arab province, while the PKK/YPG draws its recruits mainly from Syrian Kurds. The group is accused of forcibly recruiting Arab children in regions it occupied in Syria. The PKK/YPG also seized profitable oil wells in the region and sold them to the Damascus regime through smugglers despite sanctions on oil sales by its ally, the U.S. Locals complain of a lack of public services and aid while the terrorist group accumulates wealth for itself.

Media reports said at least two people were killed in the clashes and many others were wounded.

Clashes in Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq, came amid high tension in the region following last week’s killings of a top military commander of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group in Beirut and the leader of the Palestinian Hamas group Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. Israel was blamed for both attacks, and Iran and Hezbollah have vowed to retaliate.

The clashes in eastern Syria are in areas where hundreds of U.S. troops have been deployed since 2015 to help the PKK/YPG in the fight against the terrorist group Daesh, a pretext that angered Ankara. Türkiye repeatedly criticized Washington for siding with the PKK in the fight against Daesh, while the group, which operates under the name of YPG in Syria, should be recognized as a terrorist entity as the U.S. does for the PKK.

Assad regime forces and Iran-backed fighters are deployed on the west bank of the Euphrates in Deir el-Zour, while members of the PKK/YPG control the east banks of the river. The PKK/YPG imposed a curfew in the areas to ensure control of their territory.

On Monday, a rocket attack on a base housing U.S. troops in western Iraq left several American personnel wounded.

The rocket attack came days after a strike near a base of an Iran-backed Iraqi militia southwest of Baghdad killed at least one militant and wounded two others.

The attack comes days after an umbrella group of Iran-backed Iraqi militias dubbed "the Islamic Resistance" resumed rocket attacks on U.S. military bases in the country and in eastern Syria.

The tribes and PKK/YPG terrorists have clashed sporadically since late summer last year across seven districts of Deir el-Zour, which is occupied by the terrorists.

Arab tribes carried out two operations against the terrorist group on Aug. 27 and Sept. 25 and were able to clear about 33 villages of terrorists in the provinces of Deir el-Zour, Raqqa and Hassakeh and areas in Manbij and Aleppo. The tribal forces, however, later withdrew from the villages to prevent civilian casualties from YPG/PKK attacks and agreed to negotiate with U.S. forces, who served as mediators in the region.

On Oct. 11, however, after Ibrahim al-Hafil, the leader of the Akidat tribe who is leading the Arab tribes' uprising against the PKK/YPG terrorists, expressed their readiness for a new uprising, clashes broke out once again.

After the withdrawal of Daesh in November 2017, Deir el-Zour and its western parts, home to Sunni Arab communities, came under the control of the Assad regime with the support of Iran-backed groups and Russia.

The Assad regime sees the PKK/YPG forces as secessionist fighters. It has denounced its alliance with the U.S. in the war against Daesh and its self-ruled enclave in eastern Syria.

Taking advantage of the power vacuum created by the Syrian civil war since 2011, the PKK/YPG invaded several Syrian provinces, including Deir el-Zour, with the help of Washington. The terrorists forced many locals to migrate, bringing their militants to change the regional demographic.

Since 2015, the PKK/YPG has occupied Deir el-Zour, which is a resource-rich region bordering Iraq, bisected by the Euphrates and home to dozens of tribal communities.

The PKK/YPG has accused the Syrian regime of inciting violence by allowing the rival Arab fighters to cross the Euphrates River. Local tribes have been fighting against the PKK/YPG's oppressive policies, including arbitrary arrests and kidnappings since the occupation. The terrorists have assassinated tribal leaders to yoke local groups over the years.

Meanwhile, Türkiye, which has troops inside Syria and Turkish-backed opposition groups in Syria's northwest, routinely conducts operations against PKK/YPG terrorists, which seeks to establish a terror corridor along the country's border.

The U.S. Army frequently provides military training and supplies to members of the terrorist group in bases in Syria located in the Mount Abdulaziz region of Hassakeh, as well as in al-Omar and Koniko, all regions occupied by the terrorists, which Washington calls its "partner forces." Recently, it deployed more reinforcements to U.S. bases in the region as a convoy of nearly 50 trucks, tankers and armored trucks delivered fuel, weapons and ammunition to the U.S. forces stationed at the natural gas and al-Omer oil fields.

Since early 2023, the U.S. Army sent reinforcements to bases and stations in Tal Beydar and Ash Shaddadi on Jan. 6, 8, 22 and 25, and again on June 19 and 20 and July 11. Last July, days after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on Türkiye’s NATO allies to take a concrete stance against all terrorist groups, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a military spending bill that ensured continued funding for the PKK/YPG and authorized the continuation of joint operations from the end of 2023 through the entirety of 2024. The bill encompasses all Syrian groups, including the PKK/YPG. It would also include funding for non-PKK/YPG groups, including local Syrian military forces at a strategic U.S. military installation along the Syria-Jordan-Iraq border.

Thanks to U.S. help worth millions of dollars, the PKK/YPG has grown stronger in northeastern Syria, despite Washington’s promises to Türkiye that it would "consult and work closely" with Ankara against Daesh and the PKK.