Pro-Assad group threatens to hit US positions in Syria

A military alliance fighting in support of President Bashar Al-Assad today threatened to hit US positions in Syria, warning its “self-restraint” over US airstrikes would end if Washington crossed “red lines”.

The threat marks an escalation of tensions between the United States and the Syrian government and its backers over control of Syria’s southeastern frontier with Iraq, where Washington has been training Syrian rebels at a base inside Syrian territory as part of its campaign against Daesh.

Tensions have been growing in southeastern Syria over the last several weeks. The United States launched airstrikes yesterday against what it said were pro-government forces who it said posed a threat to US and US-backed forces in the area, the second such airstrike in three weeks.

The statement from the pro-Assad alliance was issued in the name of the “commander of the operations room of the forces allied to Syria”, and was circulated by a military news unit run by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, one of Al-Assad’s military allies.

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The statement from the “allies of Syria” said attacks on US forces could be carried out with “different missile and military systems, in the light of the deployment of American forces in the region”.

America knows well that the blood of the sons of Syria, the Syrian Arab Army, and its allies is not cheap, and the capacity to strike their positions in Syria, and their surroundings, is available when circumstances will it

the statement said.

It added the silence of “the allies of Syria” thus far was “an exercise in self-restraint” to allow for “other solutions”. “This will not last if America goes further, and crosses the red lines.”