On Sunday, 11 June 2018, warplanes of the illegitimate international coalition led by the United States of America committed a new crime against innocent civilians in an Iraqi refugee camp in Syria. They deliberately bombed a school in the village of Khuwaybirah south-east of Shaddadah in Hasakah governorate. The result was a massacre that took the lives of 18 civilians, mostly Iraqi women and children living in the camp. On Tuesday, 12 June 2018, that illegitimate coalition bombed the homes of innocent civilians in the village of Tall al-Shayir in the south-eastern Hasakah countryside, resulting in the murder of 12 civilians from the same family.

The true criminal face of that coalition has become grotesquely plain for all the peoples of the world to see. All the veils have been lifted that were being used to conceal the air attacks being launched without justification against innocent civilian refugee women and children who have fled the terrorism of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) only to face the harshness and brutality of United States airplanes.

The coalition continues to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Syrian people. It continues to support terrorism and use terrorists and separatist militias to achieve its goals. In the meantime, the United Nations and the Security Council have failed to take any action to implement international law and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and put an end to the activities of that coalition and its hostile schemes to target the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic in order to prolong the crisis there.

The Syrian Arab Republic once again calls on the Security Council to shoulder its responsibilities for the maintenance of international peace and security, to condemn these massacres, and to take immediate action to stop them and prevent their recurrence. It must put an end to the hostile and illegal presence on Syrian territory of United States forces and other foreign forces, and prevent them from implementing their schemes to support terrorism, undermine the security and stability of the Syrian Arab Republic, and prolong the crisis there. The statements being made before the Security Council by the United States delegation and the delegations of other members of this despicable alliance about the protection of civilians in armed conflict, the rights of refugees, respect for international humanitarian law and respect for the territorial integrity of Syria and its people have for the umpteenth time been revealed to be no more than empty words that are belied by those States’ actions on the ground. We defy them to prove the contrary.

I should be grateful if the present letter could be circulated as a document of the Security Council.

Bashar Ja’afari