The United States has started withdrawing from a key military base in northeastern Syria and redeploying its forces to northern Iraq, marking the first phase of a pullout expected to last several weeks,
Al Jazeera reports.
Heavy machinery, personnel and trucks carrying armoured vehicles could be seen moving on Monday in the northwestern city of Hasakah from the Qasrak base, the largest US base in Syria. They were headed towards the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Local sources told Al Jazeera there are different sets of equipment to be transferred, including sensitive high-tech tools that may take weeks to transport into Iraq. US President Donald Trump’s administration has been weighing a full withdrawal since at least January.
The Al Jazeera Arabic reported that the first phase of the withdrawal included the transfer of soldiers and equipment from the al-Shaddadi base, south of Hasakah, and the al-Omar oilfield in Deir Az Zor province, whose reinforcements were recently moved to Qasrak in preparation for the start of the operation. The Syrian army gained full control of the al-Shaddadi base on February 15.
The US has been reducing its military footprint in Syria for months, going from 1,500 personnel in July to about 900 currently. A full withdrawal from Qasrak would still leave US forces with a base in Rmelan near the Iraqi border.
“This is the third US base [in the region] that has started to be evacuated [in the last] week,” said Al Jazeera’s Ayman Oghanna, reporting from Damascus.
