EBRIL, Kurdistan Region - The main crossing between Iraq and Syria border, which was shut earlier this month following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, remains closed, Iraqi border guards spokesperson said on Sunday.
"After the recent events in Syria, al-Qaim border crossing was closed. A few days later, it was decided to allow only humanitarian movement and trucks stranded between the two countries," Hayder Karkhi told Rudaw.
A coalition of rebel groups spearheaded by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched an offensive against Assad’s army late last month, toppling the regime on December 8. Thousands of Syrian soldiers sought refuge in neighboring Iraq.
The border crossing, which connects the town of Abu Kamal in Syria's Deir ez-Zor province to Iraq's al-Qaim district in Anbar province, was also temporarily opened to allow nearly 2,000 of the soldiers to return to their country on December 19.
Karkhi said that the border will open again in due time.
Over 100 Iraqis, who had fled to Syria in the face of the Islamic State (ISIS) attack a decade ago, were repatriated through Kurdistan Region’s main border crossing with Turkey on Thursday. It is not clear why Baghdad chose to return them through Turkey rather than al-Qaim border crossing.
During the escalation of the conflict between the HTS and the Syrian regime, thousands of soldiers from the Iraqi armed forces, including the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), along with border police, were deployed along the Iraqi-Syrian border in Anbar province. Iraq feared that the developments in the neighboring country could negatively affect its security.
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