Damascus, April 8 (RHC)-- Syrian media say the United States has dispatched truckloads of military and logistical equipment to the country's northeastern province of Hasakah as Washington and some of its regional allies keep vying with one another to seize oil reserves and plunder natural resources in the war-battered country.
Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Syria’s official news agency SANA that a convoy of 35 trucks crossed the Waleed border crossing earlier this week and headed toward U.S. positions in the Jazira region of the province.
The sources added that the majority of the equipment was sent to a base that American troops have set up at Kharab al-Jeer Airport in al-Malikiyah district.
The report comes only a day after the Arabic-language Enab Baladi weekly newspaper, citing a video published by the local North Press news agency, reported that the so-called U.S.-led military coalition purportedly formed to fight the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group had airdropped military and logistical equipment to an area close to al-Omar oil field in Syria’s eastern countryside of Dayr al-Zawr.
In late October 2019, Washington reversed an earlier decision to pull out all of its troops from northeastern Syria, announcing the deployment of about 500 soldiers to the oil fields controlled by Kurdish forces in the Arab country.
The Pentagon claimed that the move was aimed at protecting the fields and facilities from possible attacks by Daesh. That claim came although U.S. President Donald Trump had earlier suggested that Washington sought economic interests in controlling the oil fields.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper also threatened that the U.S. troops deployed to the fields would use “military force” against any party that might seek to challenge control of the sites, even if it were Syrian government forces or their Russian allies.
Russia has slammed the US plan to seize Syrian oil fields as “criminal activity,” warning that Washington stands to rake in millions of dollars a month from the seizure. Syria, which has not authorized American military presence in its territory, has said the U.S. is “plundering” the country’s oil.
