The US occupation forces used dozens of tankers to smuggle a new consignment of crude oil from the country’s northeastern province of Hasakah to their bases in northern Iraq last week, footage shows.
The convoy of tankers, as seen in the footage, looted Syrian oil from the city of Qamishli in Hasakah through the Semalka border crossing into Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
“New footage from 26 September [is] showing a US convoy, roughly 2 kilometers long, looting Syrian oil near Qamishli, moving east towards the Semalka border crossing and heading for Iraqi Kurdistan,” said the online news magazine The Cradle in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
New footage from 26 September showing a US convoy, roughly 2 kilometers long, looting Syrian oil near Qamishli, moving east towards the Semalka border crossing and heading for Iraqi Kurdistan. pic.twitter.com/6E1d8CwTXh
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) September 29, 2023
Trucks and tankers belonging to the US occupation forces have been consistently smuggling tons of grain and crude oil from Hasakah to the Kurdistan region as part of Washington’s systematic plundering of Syria’s basic commodities.
Earlier in the month, an Iraqi political faction affirmed that the continued presence of US occupation forces in Syria and the plunder of the Arab nation’s oil resources are part of efforts to provide support and funding for terrorist groups.
A’ed al-Helali, a member of the Fatah (Conquest) Alliance in the Iraqi parliament, underlined that the United States was working on schemes aimed at investing in Syrian oil in order to “finance the terrorist groups that it had created.”
In a statement released in August 2022, the Syrian Oil Ministry accused occupying US forces and their mercenaries of “stealing up to 66,000 barrels every single day from the fields occupied in the eastern region,” amounting to around 83 percent of Syria’s daily oil production.
The US military has since 2014 deployed its forces and equipment in northeastern Syria with no authorization from the Arab country’s government, 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 US President Donald Trump admitted on several occasions that American forces were in the Arab country for its oil wealth.
Moreover, there have been several reports showing Washington’s direct or indirect support through its regional allies for the Daesh terrorist group over the past years.
The Takfiri outfit has already been driven out of all its urban bastions both in Iraq and Syria, but its remnants carry out sporadic terror attacks in both Arab countries.