An official source in the Syrian Foreign Ministry said that Damascus “rejects the hostilities unleashed by the occupying Turkish troops for several days against regions and villages in northeastern Syria.”
The source added, according to the Syrian news agency SANA, that “what the Turkish regime is doing to create a so-called security zone on Syrian territory is a shameful act of aggression and part of the policy of ethnic and geographic cleansing carried out by the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the occupied Syrian territories, which are war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The source stressed that Syria bears “every party that illegally operates outside the framework of the Syrian state and its institutions and seeks to provide excuses for the Turkish regime to launch its bloody campaigns against the Syrians, the main responsibility for covering up this opportunistic and elusive regime.” He stressed that the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Syria “will not be blackmailed or bargained by the extremist Turkish regime in collusion with its ally in Washington and some Western countries that seek cheap political gain at the expense of the Syrian people and their territorial integrity.” He noted that the Syrian government “emphasizes its right, enshrined in international law, to use all legal means to counter any measures taken by the Erdogan regime and its agents of terrorist organizations, and demands the withdrawal of all illegal foreign forces from the territory of Syria.”
