Kurdish-led administration has announced that Syrian government troops will deploy along the border with Turkey to help Kurdish fighters fend off Ankara's military offensive in northern Syria. This was announced yesterday.<br />'' <br />'' It represents a major shift in alliance for Syria's Kurds and came hours after the United States said it was withdrawing its troops from the area to avoid getting caught in the middle of the fast-escalating conflict. The Kurdish-led administration, in a statement on Facebook, said it had brokered the agreement with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to counter Turkey's ongoing push, which has drawn widespread condemnation.<br />'' <br />'' Marginalized for decades, Syria's minority Kurds carved out a de facto autonomous region across some 30 per cent of the nation's territory after the devastating war broke out in 2011. Syria's state-run SANA news agency yesterday reported that Damascus, which is backed militarily by Russia and Iran, was sending troops to the country's north to confront the Turkish aggression. However, it did not give further details.<br />''<br />''Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper has said that President Donald Trump had ordered the withdrawal of up to 1,000 troops from northern Syria, as the number of people fleeing a Turkish assault soared to 1,30,000.<br />