DAMASCUS (Tasnim) – The governor of the Syrian city of Hasakah says that the U.S. military had distributed large quantities of contaminated wheat seeds among Syrian farmers in the territories under the occupation of its troops and militants.
In an interview with Tasnim News Agency’s reporter in northeastern Syria, the governor of Hasakah, Ghassan Khalil revealed that the U.S. troops in Syria are not only busy in occupying Syrian lands, but also supporting military and agricultural terrorism.
According to a Tasnim correspondent in Damascus, the activities of U.S. occupying forces are not limited to the crimes against Syria and its people, from stealing oil and wheat to supporting terrorist groups and militants in eastern Syria, but recently a new form of criminal activity by the U.S. has been disclosed by Syrian officials.
The latest crime in this regard is the U.S. attempt to send modified wheat seeds for distribution to farmers in Hasakah province and the Syrian island region (the region between the Tigris and Euphrates) for free and ostensibly to help plant their land, but behind the scenes of this aid is the destruction of their lands and converting them to barren lands for many years, in some cases even for several decades.
The U.S. embassy in Damascus posted a statement on its official Facebook account stating that 3,000 tons of modified wheat seeds had reached eastern Syria.
These seeds will meet the needs of hundreds of farmers in the region to produce about 32,000 tons of wheat for next year. Therefore, the need of the Syrian people for flour and bread and other wheat products that has been intensified as the result of an economic crisis caused by U.S. sanctions and years of foreign-backed war will supposedly be met.
The governor of Hasakah, who has formed a committee of agricultural experts to ensure about the safety of the samples revealed to Tasnim said that experiments conducted by the Committee of Agricultural Experts show that the American-provided wheat seeds taken by farmers are infected with the “Anguina tritici” or “Tilletia laevis” which is a plant pathogenic nematode, as well as having “bacterial stalk rot of corn”.
“These two pests or diseases in American wheat seeds contaminate the soil and make it uncultivable, reducing the fertility of the land by more than 83 percent after sowing the modified seeds,” said the Governor.
“These pests not only damage agricultural fields where American modified wheat seeds are grown, but also transfer the pest from one land to another,” Khalil said.