{"id":6369,"date":"2008-10-28T04:23:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T01:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=6369"},"modified":"2013-10-12T22:30:41","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T19:30:41","slug":"syria-hits-out-at-terrorist-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/10\/28\/syria-hits-out-at-terrorist-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria hits out at ‘terrorist’ US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Syria’s foreign minister has accused the US of an act of “criminal and terrorist aggression” over what it says was a helicopter raid on its territory.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Walid Muallem said Sunday’s attack saw four US aircraft travel eight miles inside Syrian airspace from Iraq and kill eight unarmed civilians on a farm.<\/p>\n

Unnamed US military officials have said the attack targeted and killed a high profile al-Qaeda operative.<\/p>\n

But the White House has not confirmed or denied the alleged raid.<\/p>\n

Walid Muallem: We put the responsibility on the American government<\/span><\/p>\n

A US official was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that its forces had mounted a “successful” raid against foreign fighters threatening US forces in Iraq.<\/p>\n

He said the raid was believed to have killed “one of the most prominent foreign fighter facilitators in the region”.<\/p>\n

The BBC’s Kim Ghattas in Washington says the person targeted was Abu Ghadiyah, an Iraqi from Mosul.<\/p>\n

He was the leader of a network which smuggled fighters into Iraq and had been put on a US Treasury Department black list in February for funding and arming insurgents, says our correspondent.<\/p>\n

The military official quoted by AFP said: “Look when you’ve got an opportunity, an important one, you take it”.<\/p>\n

“That’s what the American people would expect, particularly when it comes to foreign fighters going into Iraq, threatening our forces.”<\/p>\n

The US has previously accused Syria of allowing militants into Iraq, but Mr Muallem insisted his country was trying to tighten border controls.<\/p>\n

‘An opportunity’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Speaking at a news conference in London, Mr Muallem said the raid on the town of Abu Kamal had killed a father and his three children, a farm guard and his wife, and a fisherman.<\/p>\n

Mr Muallem said the raid was “not a mistake” and that he had urged the Iraqi government to investigate.<\/p>\n

“We consider this criminal and terrorist aggression. We put the responsibility on the American government,” he told reporters following talks with UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband.<\/p>\n

He added: “All of them [the victims] are civilians, Syrian, unarmed and they are on the Syrian territories.<\/p>\n

“Killing civilians in international law means a terrorist aggression.”<\/p>\n

Asked if Syria would use force if a similar operation was mounted, he said: “As long as you are saying if, I tell you, if they do it again, we will defend our territories.”<\/p>\n

Referring to the US presidential election, he said: “We hope the coming administration will learn the mistakes of this administration.”<\/p>\n

Mr Muallem and Mr Miliband were scheduled to hold a joint press conference, but Mr Miliband withdrew. The UK government has declined to comment on the raid.<\/p>\n

Exclusive BBC footage of the site of the alleged raid<\/span><\/p>\n

BBC<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Syria’s foreign minister has accused the US of an act of “criminal and terrorist aggression” over what it says was a helicopter raid on its territory. Walid Muallem said Sunday’s attack saw four US aircraft travel eight miles inside Syrian airspace from Iraq and kill eight unarmed civilians on a farm. Unnamed US military officials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":60022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,56,34],"tags":[128],"class_list":["post-6369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east","category-syria","category-usa","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}