Terrorists Torch Tomb of Hafez Assad as Chaos Spreads

DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- The tomb of ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez was torched in his hometown of Qardaha, footage taken Wednesday showed, with terrorists in fatigues and young men watching it burn.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the militants had set fire to the mausoleum, located in the Latakia heartland of Assad’s Alawite community.
Footage showed parts of the mausoleum ablaze and damaged, with the tomb of Hafez torched and destroyed.
The vast elevated structure atop a hill has an intricate architectural design with several arches, its exterior embellished with ornamentation etched in stone.
It also houses the tombs of other al-Assad family members, including Bashar’s brother Bassel, who was killed in a road accident in 1994.
On Sunday, a lightning onslaught by takfiri terrorists and militants seized key cities before reaching Damascus and forcing al-Assad to leave the country.
American, Israeli, and Turkish forces have all been involved in bombing targets across Syria over the past few days in actions said to be in support of their interests and proxies. 
A high-ranking White House official said U.S. military forces will be staying in Syria after the fall of President Assad.
“Those troops are there for a very specific and important reason, not as some sort of bargaining chip,” U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer said in New York.
U.S. troops “have been there now for the better part of a decade or more to fight ISIS (Daesh)… we are still committed to that mission,” he added. 
In response to the question whether US troops will be staying in Syria, Finer said, “Yes.”
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.
The United States regularly conducts airstrikes in Syria under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
The former Damascus government maintained that the deployment was meant to plunder the country’s natural resources. Former U.S. president and current president-elect Donald Trump admitted on several occasions that American forces were in the Arab country for its oil wealth.
Meanwhile, the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden is considering the removal of the foreign terror designation for Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
The move is being considered with the aim of creating a “pathway for the world to interact with the new government” in Syria, one former U.S. official told NBC News.