US occupation forces in Syria in April 2018. Photo credit: AP/Hussein Malla.
US occupation forces in Syria have been training at least 60 militants affiliated with ISIS and Al-Qaeda at Al-Tanf base to carry out attacks inside former Soviet states, according to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
“According to credible data received by the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, the US military is actively recruiting militants from jihadist groups affiliated with [ISIS] and Al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia and the CIS countries,” an SVR statement released on 13 February reads.
The militants are reportedly undergoing a “fast-track training course” to learn how to make and use improvised explosive devices and subversive methods.
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Particular emphasis is paid to planning attacks on heavily guarded facilities, including foreign diplomatic missions,” the SVR statement adds, stressing that Washington’s plans involve deploying small groups of militants to Russia and other former Soviet nations that make up the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The plot reportedly calls for the cooperation of international terror organizations, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jamaat Ansarullah, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
“Such actions put Washington on par with major international terrorist groups,” the SVR statement concludes.
The accusation by Moscow comes just days after investigative journalist Seymour Hersh disclosed that the US government executed a covert deep-sea operation last year to bomb Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has accused the US of training hundreds of extremist militants belonging to ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in their occupation bases in Syria before deploying to the battlefield in Ukraine.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said last year that mercenaries and military specialists from 64 countries are involved in hostilities in Ukraine.
Foreign mercenaries from around the globe joined Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded for global assistance following Russia’s military invasion, with many of these mercenaries coming from Israel.
The US army has long been accused of offering support to ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria.
In 2017, SVR reported that some 350 terrorist militants were sheltered at the Al-Tanf base. On that occasion, the Pentagon could not offer a coherent explanation of what happened, nor could it justify the permanence of the base even though the Islamic State had already been defeated.
The truth is that the presence of jihadists has been reported on that base for some time, as well as their training by the US marines, so we must assume its usefulness as a nucleus of terrorist training which can be exported to other conflict scenarios in favor of the Atlantic axis.
(The Cradle) and (Misión Verdad)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
