2024-01-23T16:13:16+00:00
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/ Syria considered the recent strikes launched by the Jordanian Air Force on areas in the south of the country as “unjustified”, stressing that it is “trying to contain them in order not to affect” the relationship between the two countries.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said that these strikes killed a number of civilians, including children and women, and wounded a number of others.
The ministry added, in a statement carried by the official news agency SANA, that “these strikes were justified by saying that they were directed at elements involved in drug smuggling across the border into Jordan.”
She pointed out that “the political, media and military escalation that we have witnessed in the past few months is absolutely not consistent with what was agreed upon between the joint committees from both sides regarding sincere cooperation to combat all violations, including criminal gangs for smuggling and drug trafficking.”
The statement referred to the messages that “the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense, and the security services, sent to their counterparts in the sisterly Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in which they proposed taking practical steps to control the borders, and they also expressed Syria’s readiness to cooperate with the Jordanian civil and security institutions, but those messages were ignored, and we did not receive a response to them, and they did not receive any response from the Jordanian side.”
Syria affirmed in the statement its continuation in “combating terrorism, confronting all manifestations, practices and crimes related to smuggling and illegal drug trafficking, and working to end them wherever they exist. However, it notes that since 2011 it has suffered from the influx of tens of thousands of terrorists and the passage of huge quantities of weapons, from neighboring countries, including Jordan.”
She explained that she “insisted on not resorting to reactions that would affect the interests of the peoples of the two brotherly countries in Syria and Jordan, and her understanding in this regard was that this matter required cooperation between the two sides.”
She stated that she was surprised, despite the relevant meetings held between the two countries previously, by “repeated strikes targeting its territory by the Jordanian Air Force, which caused innocent casualties without any justification.”
The Jordanian army has been intensifying its campaign against drug smugglers for weeks, following clashes last month with dozens of people suspected of being linked to groups allied with Iran and transporting large quantities of drugs across the border with Syria, as well as weapons and explosives.
Local Syrian media and observers following the crisis said possible Jordanian air strikes on southern Syria killed 10 people, including children, early Thursday.
There has been no comment yet from the Jordanian authorities.