Syrian UN Envoy: US Occupying Syria Oil Wells, Looting Resources

By Staff, Agencies

Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari says the United States has been occupying the country's oil fields and looting its resources as the UN remains silent on Washington's act of theft.

 "The US occupies Syrian oil wells and plunders the Syrians' revenues in the shadow of the UN Security Council's silence," he told a meeting of the 15-member body in New York on Saturday.

Jaafari said the US state terrorism has targeted Syria in a bid to change the region's geopolitical map. "The Syrian war will end when foreign support for terrorism ends," he added.

The ambassador further accused Turkey of occupying the Syrian territory, killing citizens, displacing tens of thousands of people and deploying terrorists to the Arab country.

Last month, US President Donald Trump announced that American troops would remain in Syria to “secure” oil reserves and even put up “a hell of a fight” against any force that tried to take them.

He also expressed interest in making a deal with ExxonMobil or another energy company to tap Syrian oil reserves.

Pentagon Chief Mark Esper then threatened that US forces deployed around Syrian oil fields would use “military force” against any party that may seek to challenge control of those sites, even if it were Syrian Army forces or their Russian allies.

On Saturday, official SANA news agency reported that a convoy of US forces had entered Syria's Hasakah Province from Iraq.

The convoy consisting of eleven vehicles, including a tanker and a truck carrying military equipment, had passed the al-Waleed border crossing on the Iraqi-Syrian border.