Joint Ops: Measures taken to secure the borders with Syria

INA - Baghdad - Hussam Al-Tamimi

Joint Ops Command affirmed its keenness to rehabilitate the borders with Syria to prevent terrorist infiltration and stop smuggling attempts through trenches, metal barriers and control towers.

"The outposts and fortifications on the Iraqi-Syrian border were sabotaged after Daesh terrorist gangs took control of the region in 2014," said the Deputy Commander of the Joint Operations, Lieutenant General Abdul Amir Al-Shimmari, to the Iraqi News Agency (INA).

He explained that the borders with Syria is one of the most important and dangerous partitions in the country because of its great distance, and which “terrorist gangs use as corridors to travel between Iraq and Syria to carry out attacks within the two countries”

“Therefore, the Operations Command was keen to rehabilitate this border line and restore the outposts and fortifications as well as supply modern surveillance systems,” he added.

Al-Shimmari noted, “The border line is now equitable between the leadership of the border forces, the Ministry of Defense, the sectors of the Al-Jazeera Ops and western Nineveh Ops, where the army units hold the section controlled by the Border Command," explaining that "75% of the arbitrations and the inhibitor system prepared for this line have been completed, which includes digging a 3-meter-wide trench with an earthen berm from a four-way metal wire line, in addition to a BRC fence, as well as a system of concrete towers equipped with surveillance cameras with housing and resting places for fighters,”

He pointed out that the categorical part is within the responsibility of the leadership of the border forces, “which work, with gratitude for their effort, by the support of the international coalition to accomplish this work," noting that "the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces directed the initiation of a national effort with the participation of the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Defense and the Popular Mobilization Committee,

A large number of equipment was sent that included excavators and trenches to carry out the process of digging the trench and preparing a barrier system similar to the one above, in addition to establishing a dirt berm, according to Al-Shimmari statement.

“Then the Military Engineering Directorate at the Ministry of Defense implements another quadruple metal barrier where the process of conducting arbitrations to prevent smuggling begins in this cutter,” he concluded.