US army withdraws from military base in Syrian city of Hasakah

DAMASCUS - 30 December 2018: The US military withdrew from its base in the city of Hasakah in Syria, the first base to be evacuated by US forces since US President Donald Trump’s announcement of troops withdrawing from Syria, Al Arabiya Al Hadath reported on Sunday.

Two years after the deployment of nearly 2,200 US troops inside Syria, the withdrawal seems to have begun.

According to local residents, about 50 US soldiers have already left their positions in the town of Al-Malikiya in Hasakah and have turned their armored vehicles into Iraq.

Turkish sources said US troops are deployed in about 18 military bases, while US officials said the withdrawal would take between two months and three months.

The withdrawal in northern Syria comes in an area that Ankara, Moscow and Tehran are racing control it, while Kurdish units seem closer to making a deal with Russia away from Turkish intervention.

The United States still has about 2,000 troops in Syria, many of them special operations forces working closely with an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

The partnership with the SDF over the past several years has led to the defeat of ISIS in Syria but outraged NATO ally Turkey, which views Kurdish YPG forces in the alliance as an extension of a militant group fighting inside Turkey.