A Russian Su-24 strike aircraft in the sky over the Khmeimim airbase in Syria. Photo: Dmitriy Vinogradov / RIA Novosti
A series of Russian airstrikes have reportedly targeted militants operating near the United States-led coalition garrison in the southeastern Syrian area of al-Tanf.
Video footage of the Russian airstrikes surfaced online on July 7. Nevertheless, it is still unclear when exactly the airstrikes took place. The coalition and Syrian opposition media didn’t report any attack on the garrison or nearby areas in recent days.
Around 200 U.S. troops are usually deployed at al-Tanf, along with hundreds of militants from a proxy group known as the Syrian Free Army.
The coalition maintains a 55-kilometer no-fly zone around al-Tanf. Despite this, Russian fighter jets conduct armed patrols over the garrison on a regular basis, likely to monitor suspicious activities there.
The reports of Russian airstrikes on al-Tanf came less than a week after the U.S.-led coalition announced a series of military exercises with its proxies in the garrison as well as in a number of bases in the northeastern Syrian governorates of al-Hasakah and Deir Ezzor.
In May, Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, accused the U.S. of training ISIS terrorists in al-Tanf on sabotage. Later in June, Alexander Lavrentiev, the Russian president’s special envoy for Syria, said that the coalition was strengthening its military contingent in the garrison and other parts of Syria.
The U.S.-led coalition claims that it is present in al-Tanf to counter ISIS. However, the real purpose of the garrison is to block a strategic highway that links Damascus with the Iraqi capital, Baghdada. In addition, the garrison is reportedly being used as an outpost to collect intelligence, stage sabotage acts and facilitate Israeli strikes against Syria.
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