CAIRO: Syria’s foreign ministry on Sunday condemned U.S. strikes on its territory, saying Washington had lied about what was targeted and pledging to “end the American occupation” of its territory.
The U.S. said it carried out strikes on facilities affiliated to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria after a drone attack killed an American contractor in Syria.
Days earlier, the death toll from retaliatory US strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria after a deadly drone attack had risen to 19, a war monitor said, as Washington insisted that it was not seeking conflict with Tehran. Further rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias took place late on Friday, prompting more strikes by coalition warplanes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Washington carried out the initial strikes after the Pentagon said a US contractor died – and another contractor and five military personnel were wounded – by a drone “of Iranian origin” that struck a US-led coalition base near Hasakeh in north-eastern Syria on Thursday. The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said that, at President Joe Biden’s direction, he had ordered the “precision air strikes … in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps”. On Saturday, the British-based observatory, which has a wide network of sources on the ground, said 19 people were killed in the first wave of US strikes: three Syrian regime soldiers and 16 members of Iran-backed forces, including 11 Syrian nationals. –Agencies
