U.S. Missile Kills Five Syrians on Bus in Iraq
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By Inal Ersan
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - A U.S. plane fired a missile at a bus carrying 37 Syrians home from Iraq (news - web sites), killing five and wounding at least 10, the official SANA news agency said on Monday.
It said the incident occurred on Sunday morning in Iraq's al-Rutbeh area, some 100 miles from the Syrian border.
"A U.S. warplane fired a missile at 10 a.m. local time yesterday (Sunday) on a civilian bus carrying Syrian nationals in al-Rutbeh...killing five and wounding at least 10," the agency said.
The bodies of the five dead Syrians were taken to a Damascus hospital in coffins with Iraqi death certificates, the hospital director, Dr. Abdullah al-Asali, told Reuters. "The deaths were caused by an explosion...We saw shrapnel wounds and distortions due to an explosion," he said.
A source identified the five as Amjad Abou Azab, Asheq al-Warrad, Abdul-Karim al-Hamdou, Ahmad Elaywi, and Salmou Hamamseh. "They were all young, apparently laborers returning home after the war started," he told Reuters.
Ten wounded Syrians were treated at a medical center at the al-Tanf border post and two at the Damascus hospital. All were released apart from a man with a leg injury, who was transferred to a hospital in his home town, the central city of Hamma, medical sources said.
The bus was carrying 37 people when it was hit, SANA said.
Syrian analyst Imad Shueibi said he did not expect Syria to respond militarily and accused Washington of trying to halt the movement of people between Syria and Iraq.
"It is...an attempt to cut the open road between Syria and Iraq," Shueibi said. "The intention is to provoke us and we will not be (provoked)."
Syria, the only Arab non-permanent member of the United Nations (news - web sites) Security Council, has been a staunch opponent of the U.S.-led war on fellow Arab Iraq.
Oil-rich Iraq has attracted laborers from Arab and Asian countries for years, despite the crippling economic sanctions imposed on Baghdad for its 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait. |
