ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s forces have accelerated bolstering border defenses with Syria as rebels in the neighboring country control yet another strategic city on Thursday.
The Syrian army said in a statement on Thursday that it was redeploying its forces outside the city of Hama after the defeat, one week after the lightning advance of the rebels across the northern parts of the country, including the captured Aleppo, the country’s largest city.
Thousands of soldiers from the Iraqi armed forces, including the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), along with border police, have been deployed along the nearly 600 km of the Iraqi-Syrian border in Anbar province.
The forces have been put on high alert and are prepared to deter any attack should the violence in the neighboring country infiltrate Iraqi borders.
Rudaw’s Halkawt Azeez accompanied a large convoy of Iraqi armored vehicles overnight to the borders in al-Qa'im, an Iraqi border town located nearly 400 km northwest of Baghdad.
"Today, we established this joint operation. It's to provide support to the border police as well as to prevent, God forbid, any unexpected crossing that will receive stiff and powerful deterrence. There's no threat to the Iraqi borders, nor any aggression, and no force has arrived at the borders. But these reinforcements should be in place before enemies arrive," Qasim Muslih, PMF operations commander in Anbar province, told Rudaw.
A large-scale operation is underway along the border to enhance security, including installation of fences, excavation of trenches, and construction of three-meter-high fortified walls to reinforce the border against potential threats.
"Following the recent developments that occurred in the areas next to Iraq, which is the brotherly Syrian Republic, we regret what has happened, but we have to take extra precautions in the secured and liberated areas to prevent any aggression or slaughtering of children and civilians. We experienced in 2014 what they are going through, and with God's will, we will not go through the same again. Our forces are fully prepared and on high alert," said Ahmed Nasrullah, top commander of PMF operations in Anbar.
The Iraqi army is firmly stationed along the borders and maintains that the situation remains calm, with no imminent threat of the conflict spreading into the country.
“The situation is calm at the border and the military units are on high alert. I want to assure the Iraqi people that everything is under control,” Thabet al-Abbasi, Iraq’s defense minister told Rudaw on Monday.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone call on Tuesday that Iraq will not “stand idly in the face of the serious repercussions taking place in Syria, especially the ethnic cleansing of components and sects there.”
“Iraq has previously been harmed by terrorism and the results of extremist organizations controlling areas in Syria and will not allow this to happen again,” according to the official readout of the phone call.
After controlling Aleppo and Hama, the coalition of Syrian rebels led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), said it was preparing to keep marching south towards Homs.
Homs is just 162 kilometers north of Damascus.
The fresh surge of violence in Syria has prompted another wave of displacement of civilians after more than a decade of turmoil following the 2011 nationwide uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
The United Nations on Wednesday estimated that over 115,000 people have been displaced in Idlib and Aleppo by the renewed clashes.
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.
Rekar Aziz contributed to this article.