Report: US Convoy Transfers Military Equipment from Iraq to Syria

By Staff, Agencies

A convoy belonging to the US-led coalition has reportedly transferred military equipment, ammunition and fuel from American bases in Iraq to neighboring Syria.

Citing unnamed sources, Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen news channel reported that the convoy had entered eastern Syria through the Faysh Khabur border crossing in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region on Monday night.

The US military has in recent months ramped up its military presence in Syria, a country gripped by a foreign-backed militancy since 2011 which has repeatedly denounced the deployment as “illegal”.

Last month, the Pentagon sent a convoy to the bases in eastern Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province through the Al-Waleed border crossing between Iraq and Syria.

Comprised of around 50 vehicles, the convoy reached US bases in the Koniko natural gas field and al-Omer oil field on August 14.

The Pentagon claims that the deployment of its forces and equipment in Syria is aimed at preventing oil fields from falling into the hands of the Wahhabi Daesh [Arabic acronym for “ISIS” / “ISIL”] terrorists.

Damascus, on the other hand, maintains that the deployment is meant to plunder the Arab country’s natural resources.

In letters sent to the UN on Sunday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry called for an end to the illegal presence of US occupation troops and return of the country’s energy reserves and natural resources to the Damascus government.

It also put the damage inflicted on the Syrian oil and mineral sectors as a result of “acts of aggression and sabotage” by US forces and their allied terrorists at $115.2 billion.