ARA News
Politicians of the Kurdish National Council (KNC) welcomed the air strikes by the Trump administration against the Syrian government on Friday.
“All Syrian people, including the Kurds, are happy and welcoming such an air campaign by the United States,” Zara Salih, a senior politician of the KNC-linked Yekiti Party told ARA News. “This is the least that can be done by Trump administration against the brutal and barbaric regime of Bashar al-Assad, who has killed more than half a million people and pushed about 7 million others out of the country.”
The Kurdish politician suggested that the anti-Assad airstrikes “would restore the American prestige lost since the Obama presidency.”
The former US President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a ‘red-line’ against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing.
On 5 April, the Vice-president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition and senior KNC leader Abdul Hakim Bashar called for the referral of the perpetrators of the chemical attack on the Khan Sheikhoun town in Idlib to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“The crime that took place in Khan Sheikoun on Tuesday should prompt the international community to change its way of dealing with the Assad regime,” the KNC leader told a press conference in Istanbul on Tuesday.
He called on the US administration in particular to adopt a strict stance towards the regime, adding that the weak position of the previous administration has encouraged the regime to continue with its crimes.
Bashar called upon the United Nations to put Assad and his officials on the list of war criminals, stressing the need for the adoption of a UN Security Council to hold accountable those who ordered and executed the attack in Khan Sheikhoun.
“There is no difference between a terrorist who blows himself up and a terrorist who orders the bombing of civilians,” the Kurdish politician underscored.
“We are fully aware that the Assad regime does not want a political solution. This crime is not solely a Syrian affair as it has put the international community in front of a real challenge. A political solution must lead to Assad’s departure and his referral to the ICC,” he added.
The Syrian president Bashar al-Assad called the US missile strike on an airbase in central Syria early on Friday “foolish and irresponsible.”
“What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behavior, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality,” a statement from his office said.
The US fired a barrage of 59 cruise missiles at the Shayrat base, killing at least six, in response to a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town on Tuesday widely blamed on the Damascus regime.
Reporting by: Wladimir van Wilgenburg | Source: ARA News
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