US military begins withdrawing from key base in northeastern Syria

The United States has started withdrawing from a key military base in northeastern Syria and redeploying its forces to northern Iraq, marking the first phase of a pullout expected to last several weeks.

Heavy machinery, personnel and trucks carrying armoured vehicles could be seen moving on Monday in the northwestern city of Hasakah from the Qasrak base, the largest US base in Syria. They were headed towards the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Local sources told Al Jazeera there are different sets of equipment to be transferred, including sensitive high-tech tools that may take weeks to transport into Iraq. US President Donald Trump’s administration has been weighing a full withdrawal since at least January.

Al Jazeera Arabic reported that the first phase of the withdrawal included the transfer of soldiers and equipment from the al-Shaddadi base, south of Hasakah, and the al-Omar oilfield in Deir Az Zor province, whose reinforcements were recently moved to Qasrak in preparation for the start of the operation. The Syrian army gained full control of the al-Shaddadi base on February 15.

US forces have already withdrawn from two other bases in the past two weeks, al-Tanf in the southeast and Shaddadi in the northeast.

The US has been reducing its military footprint in Syria for months, going from 1,500 personnel in July to about 900 currently. A full withdrawal ⁠from Qasrak would still leave US forces with a base in Rmelan near the Iraqi border.

US forces will complete their withdrawal from Syria within a month, three sources told the AFP news agency.

“Within a month, they will have withdrawn from Syria, and there will no longer be any military presence in the bases,” a Syrian government official said, with a Kurdish source confirming the timeline.

Officials who spoke to AFP reporters about these issues all requested anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media.

“This is the third US base [in the region] that has started to be evacuated [in the last] week,” said Al Jazeera’s Ayman Oghanna, reporting from Damascus.

On Friday, the US evacuated hundreds of troops from Qatar’s Al Udeid airbase, the largest in the region, and from facilities linked to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

Oghanna said that some experts believe the main reason for these US withdrawals is due to the “recent conflict and confrontation with Iran”, which leaves these bases potentially exposed to attacks from Iran.

Meanwhile, four Syrian security personnel were killed in an attack by ISIL (ISIS) in the northern city of Raqa, which was recently taken by Damascus from Kurdish-led forces, reported Syria’s SANA news agency.

The attack, the second against security forces in as many days per Syria’s Interior Ministry, comes after ISIL (ISIS) called on its fighters to confront Syrian authorities.

Syria’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the “terrorist attack” targeted a checkpoint in the area, adding that one of the assailants was killed.

The ministry made no mention of casualties in the previous incident on Sunday, but said it too had resulted in the killing of one attacker.

Fighters from the US-trained, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had been in control of large parts of northern and eastern Syria until January.

Kurdish-led forces reached an agreement with the Syrian government to integrate with the Syrian army after losing territory during fighting with government forces. Under the deal, the Syrian army also took control of the US base of al-Tanf near the border with Iraq and Jordan.

The SDF was ⁠once Washington’s main Syrian ally, playing a vital role in the fight against ISIL (ISIS). But its status weakened as Trump built US ties with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa after the fall of Syria’s former leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.