ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria (Rojava) on Monday warned of “certain Arab channels” inciting violence and calling for the killing of various components in Syria, coming after days of bloody clashes in Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority neighborhoods.

“We call upon the countries that fund certain Arab channels inciting Syrians against one another and calling for the killing of various groups to reconsider their media policies regarding the Syrian crisis,” Ilham Ahmed, Co-chair of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria’s (DAANES) Department of Foreign Relations, said in a statement.

Ahmed called for an investigation into the reports presented by the channels that involve different Syrian groups “which distort and misrepresent the facts.”

Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods were wracked by clashes between Kurdish-led internal security forces (Asayish) and Damascus-affiliated factions from January 6 to January 11.

In their coverage of the conflict, many Arab media outlets were seemingly echoing the Syrian government’s narrative, presenting what Kurdish authorities have described as a one-sided account of the events.

Many media outlets consistently referred to the Asayish forces as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the de facto military force of DAANES, despite the SDF repeatedly stating that it had withdrawn from the area under the provisions of an April agreement.

In a statement, the SDF said that the claims of its forces being present in Aleppo’s Kurdish quarter are used as a “pretext to justify the siege, shelling, and massacres committed against civilians.”

The leading Arab media platforms also overwhelmingly used Syrian government sources, blaming the altercations disproportionately on the Kurdish-led forces, while failing to share circulating footage of violations committed against civilians by Damascus-linked factions.

After taking over a large part of the area, the government-affiliated forces were filmed desecrating corpses, insulting detained residents, and vandalizing Kurdish symbols.

“The crimes and violations committed against the Kurds in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods amount to war crimes,” Ahmed added.

The Rojava official called on human rights organizations “to intervene immediately to follow up on the cases of the kidnapped and to open an investigation into the events that took place in these two neighborhoods.”

More than 100 people were killed during the conflict, according to rights monitors, with hundreds more injured and over 150,000 displaced.

The fighting came to a halt after the SDF announced in the early hours of Sunday that they had reached “an understanding that leads to a ceasefire.” Syrian state media reported that all Kurdish-led forces had evacuated the area.