Damascus Urges UN to Force US Air Force to Stop Hitting Syria's Infrastructures

Rasa - Syria’s Deputy UN Ambassador Mounzer Mounzer, in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, urged the international body to do its best to prevent US air raids on the war-hit country's infrastructures, including dams and bridges over the Euphrates River.

News ID: 428257

Date: 17 March 2017 - 23:04

RNA - Mounzer urged the UN chief to demand the US-led coalition to stop targeting the bridges on the Euphrates River and Tishrin dams and surrounding areas “to forestall a looming catastrophe.”

Mounzer wrote that residents along the Euphrates River in Iraq could also be affected by the “systematic sabotage of infrastructure.”

“The total destruction of these dams that are being targeted by the air strikes will wash away and flood cities, towns and villages, endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of people living in those areas,” Mounzer wrote.

“The government of the Syrian Arab Republic calls on the Security Council and the Secretary-General to compel the United States of America and the members of the ‘international coalition’ to stop targeting the Euphrates Dam, the Tishrin Dam and the surrounding areas and other infrastructure, in order to forestall the looming catastrophe,” Mounzer wrote.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said early in February that airstrikes by the US-led coalition destroyed the water supply system in the ISIL's de facto capital of Raqqa.

According to the SOHR, the water supply was cut off in the city after the recent bombing of two bridges over the Euphrates River, while an aircraft, most likely from the US-led coalition, destroyed the bridges at the tiem.

The two bridges were the only ones that connected the Northern part with the South of the city.

Media sources disclosed early January that the US-led coalition's bombers targeted Syria's infrastructures even those abandoned by ISIL terrorists.

In recent years, hundreds of civilians, including women and children, have been killed and many more were wounded in the attacks of the US-led coalition in Syria and Iraq, while the Amnesty International blasts Russia for civilian deaths in Aleppo.

The Russian Defense Ministry's spokesman said early this year that the US-led international coalition was systematically bombing the Syrian infrastructure since 2012 and did not target ISIL-held oil facilities.

"Outgoing CIA head John Brennan is well aware of the fact that long before the start of the Russian campaign, the international coalition has been systematically destroying Syria's economic infrastructure to weaken the legitimate government as much as possible, heedless of burdens for civilians resulting in millions of refugees," Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.

"Surprisingly, the coalition has not attacked oil facilities captured by ISIL, which allowed the terrorists to make tens of millions of dollars per month through illicit oil trade and recruit mercenaries from all over the world," Konashenkov added.

"Sooner or later one will be held accountable for it. That is why Brennan's attempt to cushion the blow will hardly help. John Brennan is well aware of the real results of Russia's actions in Syria," he stressed.

Moscow's statement came after CIA chief John Brennan accused Moscow of using "scorched-earth" policy in Syria.

A senior politician had also blasted the wrong reports given out by different US and world bodies on the number of the civilian victims of the US airstrikes on Syria, disclosing that Washington's air assaults on his country have claimed the lives of over 5,000 civilians since 2014.

"The recent accusation leveled by Amnesty International against the US-led coalition for its reckless attitude towards civilian lives in its operations since the second half of 2014 is right, but this report mentions wrong figures for the relevant death toll," Mohammad Khalaf Qandil said late October.

He added that the number of the civilian casualties of the US-led airstrikes in the last two years is by no means any less than 5,000.

The senior politician also slammed the Amnesty International for its long delay in releasing the report, saying that the report has just been released while the US has been committing crimes in Syria and killing large groups of civilians so freely and without any international backlash for several years now.

"These air raids have surely inflicted heavy losses on the Syrian army which is fighting the terrorists in Syria," Qandil lamented.

Qandil's remarks came after the Amnesty International reported that the US airstrikes in Syria have claimed the lives of 300 to 1,000 civilians.

Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar Jafari had also called for halting the attacks launched by the US-led international coalition on the Syrian infrastructure and the country's oil and gas facilities, which have amounted to the destruction of the Syrian nation's assets.

Jafari clarified in two letters directed to the Chiefs of UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council that the aggression which has recently targeted the oil and gas fields in the Provinces of Deir Ezzur, Raqqa and Hasaka caused huge material damages and an almost complete demolition of some facilities.

He said that the aggression of the “international coalition” along with the unilateral coercive measures imposed by some states on the Syrian people is responsible for the deterioration of the difficult circumstances which undergo in Syria.

He added that Syria keeps its right of demanding the US-led international coalition to pay compensations due to the targeting of its infrastructure, according to the international law.

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