ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Wednesday that one of its fighters was killed and four children injured in clashes with Damascus-affiliated forces in northern Syria, accusing the Syrian government of “heinous crimes.” 

“One of our fighters was martyred today from wounds sustained in an attack carried out by factions affiliated with the Damascus government. The attack, launched on Tuesday evening, involved two suicide drones that targeted one of our positions in the Deir Hafer area,” the SDF said in a statement. 

Tensions have surged between the Kurdish-led force and Damascus-affiliated fighters in northern and eastern Syria with both sides trading blame for the clashes. The clashes are threatening to derail a landmark integration deal signed between the two sides in March. 

A separate attack launched earlier on Tuesday in the village of Zubaydah also involved artillery shelling “resulting in four children being injured with varying degrees of severity,” read the statement.

On Saturday, the SDF announced that factions affiliated with the Syrian government committed a “horrific massacre” in Deir Hafer’s Umm Tina village, resulting in the death of seven civilians.

However, the Syrian defense ministry later told state media that it was the SDF, not the Damascus-affiliated forces, that carried out the attack in an attempt to “villainize the Syrian Arab Army.”

The March deal, signed between interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi, stipulates the integration of the SDF and institutions in the Kurdish-held northeast into the Syrian state. 

Sharaa, earlier this month, claimed that Arabs comprise more than 70 percent of northeast Syria’s population and that the SDF does not represent the views of all Syrian Kurds.

The US-backed SDF functions as the de facto army of northeast Syria and played a key role in the territorial defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria in 2019.