US occupation forces in Syria have reportedly sneaked out of its illegal military base in Kharab al-Jir Airport in the northeastern city of Hasaka with nearly 160 heavy vehicles and military hardware, taking them into northern Iraq.
“A convoy of 156 vehicles, including 40 refrigerating cars and more than 50 tankers carrying military equipment, containers, cannons, and a number of Hummers, some of which carry huge devices,” were taken into Iraq through the illegal al-Waleed border crossing, Syria’s official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported Friday, citing “local sources from the [nearby] countryside of Rmelan.”
The report further cited its sources as noting that the trucks were accompanied by 25 military armored vehicles belonging to the US occupation forces to secure their safe passage across the border.
The sources did not elaborate on the nature of the “huge devices,” but reiterated that American occupation forces periodically transfer defective weapons and vehicles into Iraq, occasionally replacing them with new ones.
The refrigerated trucks are believed to be filled with food, medicine and other logistical materials while in Iraq to support the occupying US forces based in the war-ravaged Arab nation.
Last month, according to SANA’s sources, the American troops and their Kurdish mercenaries, referred to as ‘Syrian Democratic Forces' or SDF, transferred a 40-truck convoy loaded with stolen Syrian wheat out of the country, and, separately, removed a convoy containing 36 defective military vehicles to Iraq.
The US has tried to justify its illegal military presence in eastern Syria by persistently claiming that its troops are there to prevent a resurgence of the notorious Daesh terrorists, widely believed to have been trained and supplied by American forces and a despotic Arab regime allied with Washington.
Damascus, meanwhile, has repeatedly blamed Washington for deliberately waging an economic war on Syria by controlling 90 percent of the country’s oil resources and its finest agricultural lands, while imposing brutal sanctions on the country and preventing the import of everything from medicines and food to emergency energy supplies.
Syrian authorities, however, have also expressed confidence that Damascus will soon restore their control over all of its occupied territories. They have further urged the country’s ethnic Kurds – who have trusted the American pledge of protection against Daesh terrorists – that Washington would soon abandon them after plundering the nation’s resources.
The development came days after Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi slammed illegitimate US military presence in Syria and demanded immediate removal of American troops from Syria as well as the entire Middle East. He further censured Washington for violating Syria’s territorial integrity and ruining “peace and international security.”
Iran, Russia, and Turkey held a trilateral summit on the Syria peace process earlier in the week, condemning foreign interference in the Arab nation and reiterating Syrians’ right to determine their country’s fate.
The seventh summit of the Astana process was held on Tuesday in Tehran and attended by President Raeisi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Addressing the event, Raeisi said Syria's fate had to be decided by its own people and that military intervention will only aggravate the situation there.
“Nearly 11 years have passed since the onset of the Syrian crisis, and the Islamic Republic of Iran still believes that the only solution to the Syrian crisis is political, and military action is not only ineffective but will worsen the situation,” he said.