Syria on Tuesday protested to the UN Security Council over what it branded a barbarous US helicopter raid on a village near the Iraqi border and decided to close two US institutions in Damascus.
The government also indicated Sunday’s deadly raid, launched from Iraq, could have repercussions on ties with Baghdad by postponing a Nov. 12 to Nov. 13 meeting of the Syrian-Iraqi high commission.
Baghdad initially appeared to condone the raid by US troops as aimed against insurgents who infiltrate Iraq, before joining in condemnation of the assault on Tuesday.
PHOTO: AP
In a letter to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, Syria protested “this aggressive act and expects the UN Security Council and member countries to assume their responsibility by preventing a repetition of this dangerous violation.”
It called for the Security Council “to hold the aggressor responsible for the deaths of the innocent Syrian nationals,” state news agency SANA reported, quoting the letter.
In New York, Syria’s ambassador to the UN, Bashar Jaafari, said the letters asked Ban and the Security Council “to assume their responsibility” to prevent any repeat of “such aggressive and terrorist acts against a sovereign member of the United Nations.”
“It is up to the president of the Security Council [Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yesui (張業遂)] in consultations with the members to decide on the steps that should be taken,” he told reporters.
Jaafari said Damascus was “studying taking further steps at many levels” and added that he was awaiting further instructions from his government.
In addition to the protest, the Syrian Cabinet also decided to close the US cultural center and the American School in Damascus.
Damascus has said eight civilians were killed in the assault, including children, in the first confirmed US military action of its kind inside Syrian territory.
The ministers condemned the raid, which a US official said targeted foreign fighters who infiltrate Iraq, as a “barbarous crime which amounts to the peak of state terrorism as practised by the US administration.”
It was a “violation of the UN Charter and international law,” a statement charged.
Meanwhile, the ruling Baath party’s No. 2, Mohammed Saeed Bkheitan, said the raid amounted to “an act of piracy” against a farm inhabited by families and laborers.
In Baghdad, the government slammed the assault, which an unnamed official in Washington said was believed to have killed Abu Ghadiya, “one of the most prominent foreign fighter facilitators in the region.”
“The Iraqi government rejects the US helicopter strike on Syrian territory, considering that Iraq’s Constitution does not allow its land to be a base for launching attacks on neighboring countries,” spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. “We call upon American forces not to repeat such activities and Baghdad has launched an investigation into the strike.”
On Monday, Dabbagh said the raid targeted a border area used by insurgents to launch attacks on Iraq.
Iraq’s parliament said it regretted that “the operation took place at a time when relations between Iraq and its neighbors are progressing.”
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the