DAMASCUS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st October, 2019) More than 2,000 students and staff of the University of Aleppo, the second largest and most influential university in Syria after Damascus, rallied against the US presence in the country, the dean of one of the university faculties said.
"We are opposed to the fact that the soldiers, whom we did not call at all, remained on our land. Therefore, we demand that they leave our country. The Americans said that they came to fight terrorism, but instead did the exact opposite. They helped the militants in every possible way to destroy our statehood," Abdulrahman Sheikh Abdul told reporters.
According to the dean, not only representatives of the university faculties and public organizations participated in the protest, but also ordinary citizens, who cared.
"We say: 'We don't need America's help, Syria has real friends,' and we repeat the words of gratitude to Russia. It was your troops [Russia] who helped us in the fight against terrorists," Sheikh Abdul said.
In mid-October, after the start of the Turkish Operation Peace Spring in northern Syria, the US military left two of their military bases in Aleppo province, which existed for about two years at the settlements of Dadat and Umm-Mial near the city of Manbij. Now both of these facilities are occupied by the Syrian army, with the Russian military police patrolling the city and the area around it.
The US military has also left bases near the city of Kobane on the border with Turkey and in the province of Raqqa.
Since 2014, the US-led international coalition has been conducting military operations in Syria and Iraq against the IS terror group (banned in Russia), while in Syria the coalition acted without the consent of Damascus. In December 2018, US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of troops from Syria, but did not specify the timing.
