WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2019) A US military convoy in northeastern Syria has come under fire from local Turkey-backed radicals but was not hit, a representative of the Central Command (CENTCOM) of the United States told Sputnik on Monday.
"On November 3, a US patrol in northeast Syria witnessed several artillery attacks, shells landed a kilometer or more from the road it was moving on. The patrol was not touched," the CENTCOM spokesman said.
The spokesman added that US forces retain inalienable right to self-defense, saying that the security of the troops is given priority.
Earlier, Maj. Gen. Yuri Borenkov, head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria, said at a briefing that the United States had informed the Russian side of the shelling of the American military by militants from nearby town of Tal Tamer.
US movement in Syria has been cause for most instability in Syria over the past month, as flip-flopping strategy from Washington ordered US troops withdrawn from Syria into Iraq only to return a portion shortly thereafter to guard oil fields.
The US pullout in early October prompted Turkey to launch an operation against US-allied Kurdish forces it considers terrorists. The operation was halted under Russian guarantees of joint patrols with Syrian forces along the Syrian-Turkish border, keeping it free of Kurdish fighters.�
