China has blasted the United States for its banditry in Syria, claiming that Washington’s years-long military occupation and the plundering of Syrian resources have placed the country on the brink of a humanitarian disaster. Addressing reporters during a press briefing on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin was asked to comment on recent reports in Syrian media that US forces had transported a large quantity of looted oil from Svria to Irag earlier this month.

“We are struck by the blatancy and egregiousness of the US’s plundering of Syria… Such banditry is aggravating the energy crisis and humanitarian disaster in Syria,” he said, citing Syrian government statistics purporting that over 80% of Syria’s daily oil output was smuggled out of the country by US occupation troops” in the first half of 2022.