The US occupation forces used dozens of tankers to smuggle a new consignment of crude oil from the country’s northeastern province of Hasakah to their bases in northern Iraq last week, footage shows.

The convoy of tankers, as seen in the footage, looted Syrian oil from the city of Qamishli in Hasakah through the Semalka border crossing into Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

After weeks of clashes between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Arab tribesman aligned with Deir Ezzor Military Council (DEMC), the SDF has imposed a curfew following a resumption of fighting on Monday. These ethnic tensions are boiling over in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, illegally occupied by the US and its SDF partners, as the Arab majority resists Kurdish rule.

The Guardian on Wednesday has published some of the contents of a secretive document sent from the Ukrainian government to its Western allies in the G7, which compiles findings from the Iranian-manufactured drones Russia has used in hundreds of attacks on Ukrainian targets.

The conclusion of the document entitled "Barrage deaths: report on Shahed-136/131 UAVs" is that Western components have made their way into construction of Iranian Shahed Kamikaze drones, which Kiev sees as a scandal which must be dealt with.

A US official spoke with a Druze spiritual leader to express support for protests against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that have been taking place in Syria’s southern Suwayda governate.

The US Embassy in Syria wrote on X that Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ethan Goldrich “spoke with Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hekmat al-Hajari reiterating our support for Syrians’ freedom of expression, including peaceful protest in Suwayda.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, announced on Friday that they would upgrade relations to a "strategic partnership".

The announcement was made following Assad's first official visit to China in almost two decades, in what was a rare trip abroad for the Syrian president, who until recently was an international pariah.