WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – The Pentagon is training dozens of terrorists at 19 military camps inside war-ravaged Syria, a military expert at a diplomatic school run by the Russian Foreign Ministry says.
The camps were receiving weapons, munitions, fuel, food and other supplies from 22 U.S. military bases outside Syria, and that Americans were training terrorists at their al-Tanf military base in the south of Syria, Vladimir Kuzin with the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations told RT Arabic television news network.
He added that the U.S. 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 terrorists in a bid to maintain its influence in the political and military arenas of Syria.
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 U.S. had turned its military base near the town of al-Tanf in southeastern Syria into a training camp for terrorists.
"According to satellite and other surveillance data, terrorist squads are stationed there. They are effectively training there,” he commented.
 Meanwhile, as part of an anti-terror operation that was launched from the Hamimeh region in southern Aleppo and the second and third oil pumping stations in Badiya a few days ago, Syrian forces and allied popular fighters liberated an area that ran 45 kilometers wide and 60 kilometers deep towards the border with Iraq. The area includes the city of Abu Kamal and U.S. base of al-Tanf, sources on the field reported Friday.
The U.S. is believed to be regularly training terrorists at the base.
Washington described the area, which lies at the ultra-strategic intersection of the Syrian, Iraqi, and Jordanian borders, as its "red line.”
The cordoned off area also contains the Rukban refugee camp, which according to Syrian and Russian officials is home to terrorists, including those of al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.
Tensions have been running high between American and Syrian forces in the region following several U.S. airstrikes on positions of pro-government forces.
The National Defense Forces, a popular militia supporting the Syrian government, announced Friday that U.S.-led warplanes had bombed the Syrian army’s outpost in the village of al-Halba, 70 kilometers away from the ancient city of Palmyra (Tadmur) in Homs province.
"The combat planes belonging to the coalition led by the United States, attacked the army position in Jabal Ghurab, some 150 kilometers east of Palmyra near the border with Iraq,” a Syrian Arab Army commander told Russia's Sputnik.
"One serviceman was killed and several others wounded,” the unnamed official added.
According to the field commander, the attack was allegedly carried out when the army responded to U.S.-led coalition’s attack on Syrian troops.
The Pentagon, however, denied the casualties and said that a U.S.-backed anti-government militant group stationed in the al-Tanf base had engaged an "unidentified hostile force” outside a "deconfliction zone” around the base, forcing it to retreat.
The recent anti-terror operations in Homs, Dayr al-Zawr and the suburbs of the capital Damascus have seen over 4,500 square kilometers of the Syrian Desert being freed from the clutches of Daesh and other terrorist groups.
The Syrian forces had earlier surrounded Daesh in Badiya region and forced the terrorists to retreat. The terror group has lost much of the areas it previously controlled in Syria and is now holding pockets of land in some desert regions.