The violence in Aleppo has deepened one of the main fault lines in Syria, where President Ahmed al-Sharaa's promise to unify the country under one leadership after 14 years of war has faced resistance from Kurdish forces wary of his Islamist-led government.
The United States and other world powers welcomed a ceasefire earlier in the week but Kurdish forces refused to leave the last stronghold of Sheikh Maksoud under the deal.
Syria's army said it would conduct a ground operation to clear them and combed through the neighbourhood on Saturday.
Reuters reporters then saw dozens of men, women and children streaming out of the neighbourhood on foot.
Syrian troops put them onto buses and said they would be taken to displacement shelters.
More than 140,000 people have already been displaced by the fighting this week.
Later, the Reuters reporters saw more than 100 men shuffling out of the neighbourhood on foot, accompanied by security forces.
The men were dressed in civilian clothes and were put on six buses.
Syrian security officials at the scene identified them as members of the Kurdish internal security forces, known as the Asayish, and said they had surrendered.
The Asayish later denied any of those who left Aleppo were fighters, saying they were all civilians that had been forcibly displaced.
US envoy Tom Barrack said on Saturday he had met Sharaa in Damascus, and urged all parties to "exercise maximum restraint, immediately cease hostilities, and return to dialogue".
He said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's team was ready to mediate.
Barrack earlier said a consolidated ceasefire would ensure the "peaceful withdrawal of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from Aleppo," referring to the main Kurdish force.
Three Syrian security sources told Reuters a batch of Kurdish fighters including some commanders and their families were secretly ferried out of Aleppo overnight to the country's northeast.
Ilham Ahmad, who heads the Kurdish administration's foreign relations department, had overnight welcomed a deal to "safely redeploy fighters from Sheikh Maksoud" to eastern Syria but there was no public announcement of a completed withdrawal.
Kurdish fighters from the SDF were still holed up in a hospital in Sheikh Maksoud, security sources said.
The SDF said it was locked in street battles against government forces on Saturday, accusing them of indiscriminately bombing civilian infrastructure, including the hospital, where civilians were taking cover.
They said the attacks were backed by Turkish drones but a Turkish security source denied that Turkish drones were used, saying the operation was "largely completed, there was no need" for Turkish backing.
The Syrian army has denied conducting indiscriminate attacks and accused the ٍSDF of attacking Aleppo's town hall with a drone.
The SDF denied the claim.
The takeover of Sheikh Maksoud by the army would end Kurdish control over pockets of Aleppo held by Kurdish forces since Syria's war erupted in 2011.
Kurdish forces still hold large parts of Syria's northeast, where they run a semi-autonomous zone.
They have resisted efforts to integrate into Syria's new government, made up of former rebel fighters who ousted longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
With negotiations on their merging stalled, fighting erupted in Aleppo on Tuesday, leaving at least nine civilians dead.
The clashes are the latest bout of sectarian violence in Syria.
In 2025, more than 1000 people from the Alawite minority were killed by government-linked forces in Syria's coastal regions and hundreds from the Druze minority were killed in the southern province of Sweida, including in execution-style killings.
