PEJOURNAL – In a move to deepen its footprint in Syria, the US military has brought a number of trucks transporting logistic support, equipment and weapons to their base in al-Omar oilfield in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr, a report says.
The trucks reached the base through illegal border crossings with Iraq to boost the illegal presence of US forces in al-Jazira region, Syria’s official SANA news agency on Sunday quoted sources as saying.
Two US helicopters also landed on the Shaddadah base, SANA quoted local sources in Syria’s Hasakah province as saying.
The helicopter took off a short period, transporting 25 US soldiers on board heading east toward the Syrian-Iraqi borders, the sources added.
The Arabic-language Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al-Anba reported recently that the US was establishing an airport in its base in al-Omar, which is one of the largest bases in the Arab country.
Currently, the Damascus government is extracting oil at only 10 percent of its pre-war capacity.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon claimed on February 8 that the US forces were not protecting oil reserves in Syria, while confirming that an American firm had signed a deal with Kurdish militants to exploit Syrian oil without authorization from Damascus.
The Syrian government has declared that the deal — signed between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militant group and an American oil company named by media sources as Delta Crescent Energy LLC — is null and void, and that the parties involved are plundering Syria’s national resources.
Speaking at a news briefing, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US military personnel and contractors “are not authorized to provide assistance to any other private company, including its employees or agents seeking to develop oil resources in northeast Syria.”
Kirby also said about 900 US troops were deployed to Syria to ‘fight’ the remnants of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.
“It’s important to remember that our mission there remains to enable the enduring defeat of ISIS,” he said, using an alternative acronym for Daesh.
US is establishing an airport in its military base within an oilfield in Syria
The Hajin Military Council in the province, affiliated to the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), announced the news, Arabic-language Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al-Anba reported on Friday.
According to the report, Washington is establishing the airport in the al-Omar oilfield base, which is one of the largest military bases of the US forces in the Arab country.
The development comes on the heel of the Pentagon announcement that a US firm is exploiting Syrian oil without authorization from Damascus, and that the US troops deployed to the Arab country do not “protect” its oil reserves from Daesh attacks as previously ordered by former US president Donald Trump.
During the past several months, the US has sent hundreds of trucks carrying military and logistical equipment to the northeastern province of Hasakah.
Furthermore, Washington has also been redeploying troops to the oilfields controlled by US-backed SDF militants in eastern Syria since October 2019.
Syria, which has not authorized the presence of the US military in its territory, says Washington is “plundering” the country’s oil.
The presence of US forces in eastern Syria has particularly irked the civilians, and local residents have on several occasions stopped American military convoys entering the region.
Since January, the US forces have brought 10 military support convoys from neighboring Iraq to their military bases in eastern Syria via the al-Walid border crossing in Hasakah.