A raid by US forces inside Syria on Sunday is believed to have killed a major smuggler of foreign fighters into Iraq, a US official said on Monday, as Syria condemned the attack as “terrorist aggression.”
The official spoke on condition of anonymity about the raid, in which residents and Syrian officials said US troops landed by helicopter and killed eight civilians.
A second US official said US forces had targeted only people they considered a threat and that women and children were alive at the scene when they left.
PHOTO: AP
The Pentagon and the White House have refused to officially confirm or deny US involvement in the incident, which alarmed France and Russia. Both countries called on the US to respect Syria’s territorial sovereignty.
If confirmed, it would be the first US military strike inside Syria since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Syria says four helicopters attacked al-Sukkari farm in the Albou Kamal area in eastern Syria, close to the Iraqi border, and that US soldiers stormed a building there.
The first US official said the raid targeted Abu Ghadiya, a former lieutenant of al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a US airstrike in 2006.
“It was a successful operation,” the US official said by telephone. “He [Abu Ghadiya] is believed to be dead. This undoubtedly will have a debilitating effect on this foreign fighter smuggling network.”
The second US official said US military forces acted in support of “another agency” in conducting the operation. The official declined to elaborate but that description could suggest the involvement of the CIA.
He described Abu Ghadiya as a “bad dude” who ran one of the most prolific networks bringing foreign fighters and suicide bombers into Iraq.
The administration of US President George W. Bush, which will leave office in January after the US presidential election on Nov. 4, blames Damascus for not doing enough to stem the flow of al-Qaeda fighters and insurgents into Iraq.
But Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on a visit to London it was not possible for Syria to patrol the entire length of its long border with Iraq.
He accused the US of trying to derail recent diplomatic overtures between Europe and Syria.
“The Americans do it in the daylight. This means it is not a mistake, it is by blunt determination. For that we consider this criminal and terrorist aggression,” he told a news conference.
“We consider this criminal and terrorist aggression,” he said in London after talks with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
“Killing civilians in international law means a terrorist aggression,” he added.
Asked if Syria would use force if the US mounted a similar operation again, he said: “As long as you are saying if, I tell you, if they do it again, we will defend our territories.”
The Syrian minister said that four US helicopters had crossed the border on Sunday afternoon. Two landed at a village in northeast Syria while the other two aircraft protected them.
Soldiers emerged after the helicopters landed and started shooting at civilians working on farms, including a father and his three children and a fisherman, he said.
“All of them are civilians, Syrian, unarmed and they are on the Syrian territories,” al-Moualem told reporters.
The raid came less than a week after the capture in Husaybah, Iraq of a weapons smuggler associated with Abu Ghadiya who the official said was targeted on Sunday.
The official press in Damascus blasted the attack as a “war crime” by Bush’s administration.
The Arab League condemned the assault as a “violation which does nothing to help stability in the region and can only lead to new tensions,” calling for those responsible to be held to account.
In neighboring Lebanon, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora said the raid “constitutes a violation of Syrian sovereignty and thus is a dangerous, unacceptable attack that we condemn.”
The official Syrian news agency SANA quoted a survivor, Souad al-Jasim, as saying US soldiers fired on her and her children in the tent.
“Then they opened fire on the workers on site,” she said.
Jasim’s husband was killed in the attack and one of her children wounded. Thousands of people attended a funeral held for those killed in the raid, SANA said.
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