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US forces training terrorists at 19 camps inside Syria: Russian expert

Thursday, 21 June 2018 12:17 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 21 June 2018 12:52 PM ]

In this file picture, a US-backed Takfiri militant mans a heavy automatic machine gun (L) next to an American soldier as they take their positions at the al-Tanf border crossing between Syria and Iraq.

A military expert at a diplomatic school run by the Russian Foreign Ministry says the Pentagon is training dozens of Takfiri terrorists at 19 military camps inside war-ravaged Syria.

Vladimir Kuzin with the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations said the camps were receiving weapons, munitions, fuel, food and other supplies from 22 US military bases outside Syria, and that Americans were training terrorists at their al-Tanf military base in the south of Syria, RT Arabic television news network reported.

He added that the US military had closed the airspace over this region within a radius of 50 kilometers, without obtaining any approval from the Damascus government.

Kuzin then pointed out that Washington's military and technical support to terrorist and armed groups was in contravention of the UN Charter, and contradicted agreements to stop the escalation of the Syrian crisis.

He stressed that Washington supported militants in a bid to maintain its influence in the political and military arenas of Syria.

PressTV-Russia: Terrorists operating ‘under US nose’ in Syria

The Defense Ministry says Washington is solely responsible for sabotaging the Syrian peace process.

Late last year, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces General Valery Gerasimov told Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda daily in an exclusive interview that the US had turned its military base near the town of al-Tanf in southeastern Syria into a training camp for militants.

“According to satellite and other surveillance data, terrorist squads are stationed there. They are effectively training there,” he commented.

Gerasimov also accused the US of using a refugee camp outside the town of Shaddadah in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province as a training center for Daesh remnants, including those evacuated from the terror outfit’s former stronghold of Raqqah.

“This is essentially ISIS (Daesh),” he said. “They change their colors, take different names – the ‘New Syrian Army’ and others. They are tasked with destabilizing the situation.”

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