Hundreds of Tankers Smuggling Syrian Oil Destroyed

Date: 07 March 2021 - 22:52

News ID: ۸۸۳۵۱

DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- Russian and Syrian military forces have launched a barrage of missiles at makeshift refineries in Syria’s northwestern province of Aleppo, causing a massive blaze as hundreds of tankers caught fire in the area that is controlled by Turkish troops and their allied takfiri militants, reports said Sunday.
Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a series of strikes were launched from Russian warships and by Syrian government forces on local oil refineries near the towns of Al-Bab and Jarablus on Friday, sparking huge fires.
The missile strikes, they said, took place as Turkish-backed takfiri terrorists were trying to smuggle hundreds of trucks loaded with oil across the Syrian-Turkish border.
The fire spread to about 400 oil tankers, according to the sources.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said it had "documented the deaths of four people, while 24 others sustained various injuries and burns” in the missile strikes.
Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency reported that 18 people had been injured in the attacks.
An unnamed source from the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army said missile strikes in northern Syria had killed one person and injured at least eleven others.
Oil installations in Turkey-controlled parts of Aleppo have come under attack in recent months.
Back on January 10, unidentified drones hit oil refineries in Turkish-held areas of Aleppo, causing a large fire.
The observatory said at the time that the energy installations were struck near Tarhin village in the countryside of Al-Bab city.
Ankara has been supporting takfiri militants since they were deployed to northeastern Syria in

October 2019, when the Turkish military launched a cross-border invasion in a declared attempt to push militants of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) away from border areas.
Ankara views the U.S.-backed YPG as a terrorist organization tied to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region in Turkey since 1984.
SOHR said on Saturday that Russian military aircraft had conducted dozens of airstrikes on the positions of Daesh terrorist group across the country, killing 11 of them in the process.
Scores more were injured in the air raids as well.
The United States has reportedly deployed new military reinforcements to Syria’s oil-rich northeastern province of Hasakah, in total disregard of the Damascus government’s fierce opposition to the presence of occupation forces on the Arab country’s soil.
Local sources, requesting not to be named, told Syria’s official news agency SANA that four military aircraft with dozens of American troops aboard had landed at the U.S. military base in al-Shaddadi town on Saturday.
Some 20 boxes containing shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles were also offloaded at the base, they added.
A convoy of U.S. trucks also left Hasakah for the neighboring Iraq, carrying tens of tonnes of grain.
Syria’s official news agency SANA, citing local sources in Al-Malikiyah town, reported that 42 military vehicles loaded with wheat crops had headed towards Iraqi territories after crossing the Simalka border.
The trucks, they said, were escorted by U.S.-sponsored militants affiliated with the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).