More US, French Military Vehicles Dispatched to Northeastern Syria – Reports

According to the Lebanese Al-Manar TV network, citing field sources, the United States has set up a new military base in Syria’s Al-Hasakah province, while France has sent new military convoys to the site.

Washington has reportedly dispatched military columns, including multiple armored vehicles that arrived in Al-Hasakah and later moved toward the city of Al-Shadadi in the southern Hasakah countryside from a military base north of the Khabour Dam. The field sources further told Al-Manar that three military cars allegedly under French flags followed into a Kurdish militia base in northwestern Hasakah.

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According to the Fars news agency reported, citing Moraseloun website, which, in turn, referred to media activists, saying that the US Army had set up a military base between the towns of Tell Tamer and Tal Bidar in Hasakah province.

Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov laid out his opinion on US President Donald Trump’s promise to withdraw troops from Syria.

“The US pledged that their only aim was to banish terrorists from Syria, to defeat the so-called ‘Islamic State,’ but despite all their claims, despite President Trump’s claims, the US is in fact positioning itself on the Eastern bank of the Euphrates and has no intention of leaving,” Lavrov said.

However, according to media reports, the US has established military facilities in Al-Hasakah, as well as in eastern Deir ez-Zor earlier this month, having dispatched more equipment to the Syrian army’s defense lines. France, for its part, has allegedly deployed military convoys to support Kurdish militias – a move that substantiates claims by a senior Kurdish official who told reporters in March that President Emmanuel Macron had promised to send more troops to the area to “mediate” between the Kurds and Ankara.

The foreign minister’s remark is less than a month after President Trump promised to “leave Syria, like, very soon,” apparently contradicting earlier comments by his administration, including high-ranking officials at the Pentagon and State Department, claiming that US troops would maintain an open-ended presence in Syria.

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Since 2014, the US-led international coalition has been carrying out airstrikes on what it described as Daesh* targets in Syria, without either a UN mandate, or the Syrian authorities’ permission. Damascus has repeatedly dismissed the American military presence in the country as “illegal.”

*Daesh, also known as ISIL/ISIS/IS, a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries