US helicopters flying from Iraq landed inside Syria yesterday and dropped special forces who killed eight people, including four children, the Damascus government said today as Washington admitted it had targeted "foreign fighters".
Syria warned it held the US "wholly responsible for this act of aggression and all its repercussions".
It described the dead as Syrian civilians, five of them members of the same family. Syrian state television said the attack was against a farm near Abu Kamal, five miles from the Iraqi border. Doctors in nearby al-Sukkariya said another seven people were taken to hospital with bullet wounds.
The attack threatened to unleash a new wave of anti-US feeling in Syria and across the Middle East. The country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, is being courted by Europe and had been looking forward to improved relations with Washington after the November 4 presidential election.
News of the attack has led news bulletins across the Arab world. The Syrian newspaper Tishin called it a "US war crime".
Syria summoned the US charge d’affaires in Damascus to explain the attack. It called on the Iraqi government to prevent its airspace being used in such a way in future.
"This is an outrageous raid which is against international law," the Syrian ambassador to London, Sami al-Khiyami, told Reuters. "It is a terrible crime. We are expecting clarifications from the Americans."
Eyewitnesses said eight US soldiers landed in two helicopters and the dead were building workers. A senior Syrian source, quoted by the official Sana news agency, said four helicopters violated Syrian airspace. The source described the target as a "civilian building under construction".
In Washington, an unnamed military official told the Associated Press news agency the raid targeted elements of a "foreign fighter logistics network". It was because of Syrian inaction, the official said, that the US was "taking matters into our own hands". It is the first known US attack on Syrian soil.
An Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told Reuters: "The attacked area was the scene of activities of terrorist groups operating from Syria against Iraq."
Farhan al-Mahalawi, the mayor of the Iraqi border town of Qaim, told Reuters the targeted village had been surrounded by Syrian troops.
In Israel, a security official said the country was not involved. Last year, Israel destroyed an alleged nuclear site in northern Syria.
Qaim has been a significant crossing point for foreign fighters, weapons and money entering Iraq to fuel the Sunni insurgency. Last Thursday, the commander of US forces in western Iraq told reporters US troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border. Major General John Kelly said Iraq’s western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries, but Syria was "a different story".
Thabet Salem, a political analyst, told the Arabic-language TV news channel al-Jazeera the US appeared to have mistaken building workers for infiltrators. "It will raise questions as to why this is happening towards the end of the current US administration," he said.
Last year the then US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, praised Syria’s cooperation in reducing violence in Iraq. But Syria has since refused to restart intelligence-sharing with the US until Washington recognises its assistance by returning an ambassador to Damascus.
Joshua Landis, a US expert on Syria, said last night: "The Bush administration must assume that an Obama victory will force Syria to behave nicely in order to win favour with the new administration. Thus White House analysts may assume that it can have a freebie – taking a bit of personal revenge on Syria without the US paying a price."
Syria is due to take a step in from the cold today when its foreign minister, Walid al-Mualim, visits London to hear praise for its newly conciliatory policies in Lebanon. Officials are expected to urge him to distance his nation from Iran.
In recent months, Syria has established diplomatic relations with Lebanon and held several rounds of indirect talks with Israel, with Turkey acting as broker. In July, President Assad was invited to an EU summit in Paris.