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Syria accuses America of‘war crime’:

DAMASCUS — A startling United States commando attack inside Syrian territory over the weekend has sent a clear signal to countries giving safe passage to terrorists: Take action, or the US will.

A US military official in Washington said special forces conducted the raid in Syria on Sunday to target the network of Al Qaeda-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria to help fight in the war in Iraq.

====Syria said troops in four helicopters attacked a building and killed eight people.

====“We are taking matters into our own hands,” the United States military official in Washington told ====The Associated Press====, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the political sensitivity of cross-border raids.

====The area targeted Sunday is near the Iraqi border city of Qaim, which officials have said has been a major crossing point for fighters, weapons and money coming into Iraq to fuel the Sunni insurgency.

====Syria yesterday furiously protested what it described as a “war crime”. Describing the raid a “serious aggression”, the country’s Foreign Ministry summoned the ====charges d’affaires ====of the United States and Iraq in protest.

====Government newspapers also published scathing criticisms of the raid. ====Tishrin==== splashed its front pages with a headline denouncing it as a “US war crime,” while ====Al Baath ====newspaper described the attack in an editorial as a “stunning, shocking and unprecedented adventure”.

====The move is similar to one taken recently in America’s other current war. In July, US President George W Bush secretly approved US military raids inside anti-terror ally Pakistan, which has been unwilling or unable to stem the flow of militants hiding in Pakistan and waging cross-border raids into Afghanistan.

====The attack had immediate political fallout. Britain and Syria cancelled a planned joint press conference of their foreign ministers in London scheduled for yesterday. The attack threatens to overshadow what was a long-planned visit to London by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem aimed at repairing the two countries’ rocky relationship under the leadership of Mr Tony Blair.

====Mr Sami al-Khiyami, the Syrian ambassador to London, said: “This is an outrageous raid which is against international law. It is a terrible crime.” He said that Syria was waiting for “clarifications from the Americans” before deciding whether to lodge a complaint at the United Nations Security Council. Mr Jihad Makdissi, the press attache at the Syrian Embassy in London, said: “If (the United States) have any proof of any insurgency, instead of applying the law of the jungle and penetrating, unprovoked, a sovereign country, they should come to the Syrians first and share this information.”

====But Mr Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, pointed out that Syria has failed to act against terror groups in the past. “The attacked area was the scene of activities of terrorist groups operating from Syria against Iraq,” he said.

====“Syria condemns and denounces this act of aggression and US forces will bear the responsibility for any consequences,” the official ====Sana ====news agency quoted an unidentified official as saying. ====Agencies