Irish Anti-War Movement Condemns US Syrian Attack

The Irish Anti-War Movement has condemned the US attack in Syria in which eight people were killed.

The US operation in the middle-eastern state has led to international outrage, with Syria's foreign minister Walid Muallem, who was in London for talks with the British Foreign Secretary David Milliband, claiming the dead included a farmer and his three children, a farm guard, his wife and a local fishermen.

Four US military helicopters attacked the civilian building under construction shortly before dusk, in Sukkariyeh – a village about five miles inside the Syrian border.

The US has said the CIA paramilitary officer and United States Special Operations Force's raid targeted the home of Abu Ghadiyah, the nickname for the leader of a key cell of foreign fighters in Iraq.

Mr Muallem called the attack "terrorist aggression". These sentiments were echoed by the Irish Anti-War Movement, who called the raid "brutal and unwarranted".

"It amounts to desperate terrorist tactics," said spokeswoman Marnie Holborow. "This is obviously part of a concerted policy to extend US military operations outside the border of Iraq."

Throughout the Iraq War, Syria, who shares a wide desert border with the state, is believed by the US to have served as a conduit for foreign fighters intending to enter Iraq to fight US, coalition, or Iraqi military and police forces.

US officials have complained that militants and their reinforcement and logistics networks have been able to operate openly in Syria, and that the Syrian government has not made sufficient effort to stop it.

However, the operation has led to widespread condemnation from governments including Russia, Iran and Qatar. Newspapers in Syria described the raid as a 'US war crime', and accused the out-going Bush administration of 'political madness.'

(DW)