DAMASCUS (Xinhua) – The U.S. forces have smuggled 40 truckloads of stolen Syrian oil from northeastern Syria into Iraq in recent days, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.
The oil was taken from the Rmailan area in the northeastern Syrian province of Hasaka, said the report.
“The U.S. occupation forces have transported tanker trucks loaded with stolen oil and vehicles carrying military equipment from al-Jazeera region [of Hasakah province] towards the Iraqi territory,” the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported on Saturday.
The crude, the report said, had been extracted “from oil wells occupied by US forces in al-Jazeera region.”
The U.S. convoy, escorted by armored vehicles, also transported truckloads of weaponry from Hasakah into Iraq through an illegal crossing, SANA added.
The Syrian government has repeatedly accused the U.S. troops of stealing Syrian oil and depriving the Syrians of their own resources amid a harsh economic situation caused largely by the U.S. sanctions.
The U.S. forces have established various bases in the oil-rich areas in Hasakah and took control of the oil and gas fields there.
The United States and its allies invaded Syria in 2014 under the pretext of fighting off the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group. Washington began stealing and smuggling the Syrian crude from the oil-rich eastern Syrian province of Dayr al-Zawr and elsewhere under former American president Donald Trump.
No earlier than on July 7, the occupation forces used dozens of tanker trucks and other vehicles to smuggle stolen crude to Iraq using another illegitimate crossing lying on the outskirts of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakah, SANA said.
Damascus considers the U.S. presence to be outright violation of its sovereignty, vowing that it reserves the right to respond to the occupation as it sees fit.
Earlier this month, a Syrian army checkpoint blocked a U.S. military convoy that was attempting to pass through the Hasakah Province, forcing it to retreat.
In another development, Russia said militants are using ambulances and medical vehicles belonging to ‘White Helmets’ to launch attacks against residential neighborhoods as well as the positions of Syrian government forces across the war-torn country.
Yevgeny Gerasimmov, deputy chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of Warring Parties in Syria, said on Sunday that members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist outfit use cars with medical symbols and vehicles of the ‘White Helmets’ group to attack government-controlled Syrian territories as well as the positions of Syrian army.
Gerasimmov noted that HTS militants carried out sixteen attacks on Saturday, including eight in the de-escalation zone in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, five in the northern province of Aleppo and one in the western coastal province of Latakia.