The United States must thoroughly investigate US military crimes in Syria and punish those responsible, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Friday
BEIJING (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th January, 2022) The United States must thoroughly investigate US military crimes in Syria and punish those responsible, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Friday.
"The US should investigate these serious crimes faithfully, and severely punish those responsible, as well as those who covered them up," Zhao told a briefing, commenting on reports of civilian deaths in indiscriminate US airstrikes.
US war crimes in Syria are just the "tip of the iceberg" of its aggression around the world, the spokesman added.
In December, The New York Times reported that thousands of civilians, including children, in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan were killed by US airstrikes conducted with imprecise targeting and "deeply flawed intelligence." The newspaper studied 1,311 documents from a hidden Pentagon archive and concluded that the civilian death toll was much higher than the 1,417 casualties reported by the US military in Iraq and Syria, and the 188 deaths reported in Afghanistan since 2018.
Another report last week revealed that US special operations bombed Syria's Tabqa Dam in 2017 despite it being on a no-strike list. The newspaper said, citing the dam's former director, that had the bombing destroyed the facility, it would have killed more civilian Syrians than during the entire civil war since 2011.
