DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Residents in a village in northern Syria backed by a Syrian army unit intercepted a U.S. military convoy that attempted to go into their village on Saturday and forced the U.S. troops out of the area.
Residents of Hammo village in the southern countryside of Qamishli, backed by a Syrian army unit, intercepted a military convoy of the American occupation that attempted to go in their village and expelled it from the area, the Syrian official news agency reported on Saturday.
Local sources told SANA reporter that a convoy of four armored vehicles linked to U.S. forces accompanied by a car belonging to the separatist SDF militia tried to cross into the international road passing through the village, but the locals intercepted the convoy and expelled it from the area.
U.S. military trucks and tankers frequently carry tons of grain and crude oil from the northeastern Syrian province of Hasakah to the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq as part of Washington’s systematic smuggling of basic commodities out of Syria.
The U.S. military has for long stationed its forces and equipment in northeastern Syria, with the Pentagon claiming that the deployment is aimed at preventing the oilfields in the area from falling into the hands of Daesh terrorists.
Damascus, however, maintains the deployment is meant to plunder the country’s natural resources. Former U.S. president Donald Trump admitted on several occasions that American forces were in the Arab country for its oil wealth.
In another development in the country, militants in northwest Syria attacked an army position Saturday killing and wounding more than 30 troops, opposition activists said.
The attack came days after Russian and Syrian warplanes carried out several airstrikes on the last major militant stronghold in the northwestern province of Idlib and parts of Aleppo killing several militants.
The Britain-based so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said the Ansar al-Tawhid group, which is allied with Al-Qaeda, carried out the attack with its members first detonating a massive bomb and then storming the position manned by government troops.
The Observatory said the attack killed 11 soldiers and wounded 20 others.
Other activist collectives, including Amjad News, also reported the attack saying it killed and wounded dozens of soldiers without giving a breakdown.
There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government or state media.