Tags
DAMASCUS – The air defense units of Syrian armed forces managed to shoot down five UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) attempting to conduct an attack on an oil-processing plant in Syria’s western province of Homs, Sham FM radio station reported on Sunday.
“Syrian forces have managed to shoot down five UAVs that attempted to attack oil refineries in the Homs province,” the statement issued by the radio station said.
Terrorists have been regularly conducting attacks on Homs’ energy infrastructure facilities, including the aforementioned plant, according to the radio station. Earlier in the month, terrorists shelled the plant and three gas stations in the province, causing a fire in two of them.
Amid regular attacks on Syrian oil facilities, the country’s oil ministry announced in December the launch of two gas fields producing a total of one million cubic meters of gas per day in order to improve the country’s electricity supply, severely weakened by almost 9 years of constant war.
Syria consumes about 100,000 barrels of oil per day and produces only 24,000 barrels. Many of the country’s oil facilities are either destroyed or not controlled by the government, while Western sanctions hinder the delivery of oil and oil products to the country.
Deir ez-Zor
People in a town in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria held protest rallies against the US occupying forces and their affiliated Kurdish militants, also known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Syrian people in the town of al-Safireh protested the presence of the US occupying forces and the SDF in Deir ez-Zor, calling for their expulsion, the Arabic-language service of SANA news agency reported on Monday.
It added that the protestors closed the main road connecting Deir ez-Zor to al-Raqqa from the al-Jazirah region by setting fire on car tires. Relevant reports said earlier this month that the United States had been setting up new military bases in northeastern Syria to gain a foothold in oil-rich regions of the country.
According to Anadolu news agency sources, United States servicemen started creating a new base near Tal Brak, a village in northern Hasakah province, in a bid to block Russian servicemen from getting to the Rmelan district that houses Syria’s main oil fields.
Equipment and materials for the construction of the new US base have been redeployed from Iraq. Another base will be set up in former Kurdish fortifications in the south of Hasakah, to control (i.e, steal) oil extraction in the Deir ez-Zor province, according to the report.
