US to tighten up military force to protect northeastern Syria

Washington

“The US is committed to reinforcing our position, in coordination with our SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) partners, in northeast Syria with additional military assets to prevent those oil fields from falling back to into the hands of ISIS or other destabilizing actors,” a Pentagon official said in a statement.

The official did not provide any numbers or confirm reports that US armoured assets would stay by the oilfields, once used to fund the Islamic State group’s short-lived “caliphate”.

The announcement came as Russian forces began patrolling the flashpoint Syrian-Turkish frontier, filling part of the vacuum left by a US troop withdrawal that effectively returned a third of Syria to the Moscow-backed regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Media sources saw a Russian patrol set off from Qamishli westwards along the border flying Russian flags. The Russian defence ministry said the patrol covered “more than 60 kilometres” between Qamishli and Amuda. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the Kurdish-led SDF had pulled out of some areas at the eastern end of the border