Damascus orders closure of American cultural center and school

Source: nowlebanon.com, 28-10-2008

Syria decided on Tuesday to close the US cultural centre and the American school in Damascus after a deadly US raid on a village near the Iraqi border, the state news agency SANA reported.

Damascus has said the eight people killed in Sunday's assault were all civilians, including children, and it has branded the raid - the first confirmed US action of its kind inside Syrian territory - a "terrorist" act.

The Syrian cabinet in a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Mohammed Naji Otri called for the education and culture ministers to take the necessary measures to close the two American institutions, SANA said.

In the aftermath of the helicopter-borne raid by US troops launched from Iraqi territory, the ministers also decided to postpone a November 12-13 meeting of the Syrian-Iraqi high commission.

The ministers condemned the raid, which a US official said targeted foreign fighters who infiltrate Iraq, as a "barbarous crime which amounts to the peak of state terrorism as practiced by the US administration."

It was a "violation of the UN Charter and international law," they charged in a statement.
Meanwhile, the number two in Syria's ruling Baath party, Mohammed Saeed Bkheitan, said the US raid amounted to "an act of piracy and state terrorism" against a farm inhabited by families and
laborers.