Provocations continue to escalate all across Syria in a bid to alter the status quo on the ground and forestall the U.S.’s planned troop withdrawal from the country’s northeastern regions.
On Monday, Daesh claimed responsibility for a car-bomb that targeted a U.S. military convoy in Syria's northeastern Al-Hasakah province earlier that day.
The bomb went off as the convoy passed through a checkpoint run by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist group.
One U.S. soldier was injured and five YPG/PKK terrorists were killed by the blast.
A U.S.-led coalition, established in 2015 to fight Daesh, has confirmed that no U.S. military personnel were killed in Monday’s attack.
Following the attack, U.S. military bases in Syria were placed on high alert as helicopters were dispatched from Qamishli and Rmeilan to al-Shadadi.
Some wounded PKK terrorists were also flown in U.S. helicopters to several medical points where they received treatment.
The blast targeted a 13-vehicle convoy that was bound for Deir Ezzor and resulted in craters in a radius of 200 square kilometers.
The U.S. declined to release the identities of those killed and injured, issuing a ban on its PKK ally from reporting on the names of those who were aboard the convoy.
In its own online statement, Daesh appeared to claim responsibility for the attack, which, it said, had targeted a joint military convoy comprised of both U.S. troops and YPG/PKK elements in al-Hasakah’s Shaddadi district.
Last week, four Americans, including two soldiers, were killed in an apparent suicide attack -- also claimed by Daesh -- in Syria’s northern city of Manbij.
Speaking exclusively to Yeni Şafak daily, Independent Syrian Kurds Association head Abdulaziz Temo pointed that bombings in Manbij and al-Shadadi were “explosive messages” meant to convey that the Daesh threat is still alive, especially following PKK terrorists’ failed attempts to secure recognition for a so-called autonomous state from Damascus, as meetings with representatives from the regime and Russia intensified recently.
“We watched two attacks that were meant to tell us that Daesh still maintains its operational capacities from the east all the way to the west. There’s only one goal behind this, which is to will the U.S. to remain in this region.”
“So-called PKK representatives, who are panicking, are sparing no effort, going to Moscow and the U.S. They went to the Hmeimim air base in Latakia and pleaded with Russian officials several times.
“The aim is to include the PKK in any Russian plans to quickly fill the vacuum following U.S. troop pullout with Syrian regime forces.”
