“Syria is considered the vital area for security in Iraq. What is happening in Syria threatens Iraq’s national security,” Falih al-Fayyadh told state television, but stressed that the PMF and the Iraqi army have bolstered the presence of troops at the Iraq-Syria border.
A coalition of Syrian rebel groups spearheaded by the jihadist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) launched a major offensive against the Syrian army over the past week. They took control of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in the country, and advanced their offensive into Hama province.
“I categorically deny the entry of the Popular Mobilization Forces into Syria, and our forces do not operate outside Iraq,” Fayyadh stated, amid rumors that the PMF have been dispatched to Syria to assist President Bashar al-Assad.
While acknowledging the presence of an opposition movement in Syria, the PMF chief warned that groups such as HTS are internationally classified as terrorists.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, placed the death toll in five days of fighting on Monday at 514, including 217 and 51 militants from HTS and SNA respectively, 154 Syrian army soldiers, and 92 civilians.
Syrians rose against the Assad regime in 2011, leading to a full-scale civil war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, left millions more in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and left much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins.
More than 13 million Syrians, half the country’s pre-war population, have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than 6 million of whom are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to United Nations figures.
