• Damascus accuses Bush of ‘terrorist aggression’
• Crowds gather at funerals chanting anti-US slogans
Walid al-Muallem, Syria’s foreign minister, used a visit to London to lambast the US for its “cowboy politics” and hinted that Sunday’s raid was designed to halt Syria’s gradually improving relations with the EU and Britain. Iran and Russia also condemned the US for aggravating tensions in the region.
Syria reported that US troops, backed by helicopters, launched the attack five miles into its territory, killing eight people, including four children. But at the funerals of the victims, where angry crowds chanted anti-American slogans, an Associated Press photographer said he saw the bodies of seven men.
The US refused to comment publicly, but an official said the raid’s target was Abu Ghadiya, a former aide of the Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Ghadiya was a major smuggler of al-Qaida-linked foreign fighters into Iraq, the official told Reuters. “He [Abu Ghadiya] is believed to be dead. This undoubtedly will have a debilitating effect on this foreign fighter smuggling network.”
If confirmed, it would be the first such US strike inside Syria since the 2003 invasion. Muallem, in the first public comments by the Damascus government, warned that an attack recurred, Syria would defend its territory. “The Americans know that we stand against al-Qaida,” he said. “They know full well we are trying to tighten our border with Iraq.”
Muallem had been due to hold a press conference with David Miliband, the foreign secretary, but the event was cancelled by mutual agreement, apparently because Miliband did not want to be questioned about the raid. Miliband said Britain was concerned about the growth of al-Qaida groups and insurgent networks developing along the Syria-Iraq border. British officials claimed Muallem did not deny the seriousness of the problem and the need for better cooperation with Iraq, but gave no firm commitments. In Baghdad, the Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, appeared to support the US by calling the area of the attack “a staging ground for activities by terrorist organisations hostile to Iraq”. He added the US operation “was targeting smugglers who transferred people to Iraq”.
The US has steadily been ceding control of the Iraqi armed forces to the Maliki government and has transferred security responsibility for 12 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. But the US still controls Iraqi air space and runs military operations where and when it chooses. “This is not something we can control or respond to,” an Iraqi defence official said. But Brigadier Fadel al-Sultani, now responsible for security in the Hilla region - which takes in part of the restive Anbar province that stretches towards the Syrian border - said the province was no longer a haven for insurgents using the Iraqi border town of Qaim as a staging point.
“We can say with certainty that al-Qaida are 95% defeated,” said Sultani. “They have gone. Five percent are out there and are robust. We retain a strong interest in them, and so do the Americans. They were with us this morning discussing an offensive.” A convoy of senior US officers left his headquarters compound in Hilla around noon on Sunday.
The attack in Syria also provoked new concerns about the deal extending the legal basis for US forces in Iraq after a UN mandate expires in December, with a prominent Kurdish politician, Mahmoud Othman, saying Iraq’s government had no prior knowledge of the raid.
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