US-Led Coalition’s Continuous Attacks against Residential Areas in Syria Complete Disregard for International Law

DAMASCUS, (ST)- Syria has renewed its call on the Security Council to assume its responsibility to preserve international peace and security and to stop the crimes being perpetrated by the US-Led Coalition against Syrian civilians, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates.

In two identical letters to UN Chief and President of the Security Council regarding the coalition’s continuous barbaric attacks against the Syrians, the ministry said ” on August 16, 2017, the coalition bombarded residential areas in the Syrian city of Raqqa, killing 17 civilians, wounding tens of others, most of them were women and children, and causing huge damage to the infrastructure as well as to public and private properties there.”

 The illegal coalition which was formed allegedly to fight ISIS, also carried out three raids against “Sayedat al-Bishara” Church in al-Thakana neighborhood in Raqqa though there were no ISIS terrorists inside. The church was completely destroyed in the attacks, the ministry added.

It went on to say that the airstrikes of the alleged coalition against residential areas and the use of smart rockets and internationally banned white phosphorus bombs have become a systematic and deliberate behavior of the coalition in complete disregard for the simplest rules of international humanitarian law and human rights. This aggressive behavior also expresses the successive US administrations’ belief in the law of the jungle, something that contradict its original role, as a Security Council permanent member state, in maintaining international peace and security, the ministry pointed out.

“Syria renews it condemnation of the international coalition’s acts of aggression which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity and urges the countries participating in the US-led coalition, which claim that they respect the international humanitarian law, to immediately dissolve this illegitimate coalition, which was formed without a request from the Syrian government and outside the international legitimacy, or to at least withdraw from it,” the ministry said, calling on the Security Council to put an end to this coalition’s massacres against the Syrians and to hold it accountable for its crimes in Syria.

Hamda Mustafa