Hawzah News Agency  (Damascus, Syria) - Mahmoud al-Shawa said, "United States had "decided to invent various pretexts to justify keeping the illegal presence of their bases and troops on Syrian soil in order to establish control and domination over the oil fields in order to separate Syria", Sputnik reported.

The Deputy Minister speaking at the Moscow Conference on International Security, stressed that Washington was also assisting the Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group for this purpose.

The US grossly violated humanitarian law during the conduct of military operations in Syria, Mahmoud al-Shawa added.

He noted that after the forces of Russia and Iran "contributed to the end of the war of attrition", the United States stepped up its presence in the Northern part of Syria.

"This was accompanied by US-Israeli aggression, a gross violation of international humanitarian law in order to support terrorist groups," al-Shawa said at the conference.

The US-led coalition of 68 nations has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

Russia has been supporting Syrian government forces in their fight against terrorism at the request of President Bashar Assad since 2015.