DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – U.S. Special Forces are aiding terrorists in Syria to engage in "chemical attack provocation” via chlorine gas to provoke Western airstrikes on Syrian forces, says the Russian Defense Ministry.
"Our intelligence confirmed by three independent Syrian sources says that commanders of the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’, backed by the American Special Forces operators, are preparing a serious provocation involving chemical warfare agents in Dayr al-Zawr province,” said a statement released by the ministry.
It added that the FSA militants would probably use chlorine to launch a chemical attack.
"To imitate yet another ‘chemical attack by the regime against peaceful civilians’, the rebels brought canisters filled with chlorine,” it added.
It noted that reports of such a move would be distributed in Western media and used as a pretext for further coalition airstrikes against Syrian forces.
In Mar, a high-ranking Russian military commander has warned that the United States is training foreign-sponsored terrorists in the hope that they would launch false flag chemical attacks in southern Syria to provide a pretext for Washington to carry out airstrikes on Syrian government troops and infrastructure.
"We have reliable information at our disposal that U.S. instructors have trained a number of militant groups in the vicinity of the town of At-Tanf to stage provocations involving chemical warfare agents in southern Syria,” Russian General Staff spokesman General Sergey Rudskoy said at a news briefing in Moscow.
In another development, following days of intense fighting, Syrian government forces have thwarted an attempt by Daesh remnants to seize a strategic town near the Iraqi border, clearing all its neighborhoods of terrorists.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that Syrian troops and their allied forces had fully secured Bukamal, which lies on the Euphrates River in the eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr after days of violent clashes with the terrorists.
Syrian "forces and their allies regained control of the whole town of al-Bukamal after expelling Daesh from its northern and northwestern parts,” said the head of the UK-based observatory, Rami Abdel-Rahman.
The terrorists had on Friday sent bombers into several neighborhoods of Bukamal to pave the way for their advance on the city.
However, surrounded by Syrian forces, the terrorists were forced to retreat to the vast Badiya region, which stretches from the country’s center to the border with Iraq, he said.
In November last year, Syrian forces announced that they liberated the town, the last Daesh bastion in Syria.
Dayr al-Zawr is the capital of an oil-rich Syrian province of the same name, which borders Iraq. The city used to serve as the main Daesh stronghold in Syria after the terror group left Raqqah in the north to U.S.-backed Kurdish militants.