Saudi Arabia has deployed “dozens” of soldiers to a major oil field in eastern Syria’s Deir Ez-Zor in an  apparent effort to protect the group of Saudi and Egyptian Aramco experts who arrived in the area the previous week, reports have said.

According to the Arabic service of the Anadolu Agency, local sources said that the Saudi soldiers arrived at Al-Omar oil field aboard helicopters. The source also added that this coincided with the arrival of about 30 trucks carrying drilling and digging equipment, which entered Syrian territory from northern Iraq.

The Al-Omar oil field is the largest in the country, which was once seized by Daesh, it is currently under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (formerly YPG), although there has been an increase in American troops being deployed in the area.

It is understood that investments will be made through contracts signed between Aramco and the US government whose own armed forces have steadily been increasing their military presence around the oil fields. Despite initially claiming to scale back troops from Syria, US President Donald Trump announced in October that America had “secured” and taken control of the oil in the Middle East.

The Syrian government, which has not authorised American military presence within its territory, has accused the US of “plundering” the country’s oil resources. Earlier today, the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem met with his Russian counterpart in Moscow Sergey Lavrov affirming the need for a political solution to the crisis in Syria and mentioned the “looting” of Syrian oil by the US.

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Featured image: Saudi troops [SGT. H. H. DEFFNER/Wikipedia]