Baghdad The Ministerial Council for National Security considered the American bombing of a site on the Iraqi-Syrian border, a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
The Media Office of the Prime Minister stated that the Ministerial Council for National Security held, today, Monday, an emergency meeting chaired by the Prime Minister, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, devoted to discussing the repercussions of the American bombing, which affected a site on the Iraqi-Syrian border, and also discussed targeting criminals and saboteurs and terrorist groups, the electric power plants and transmission towers.
The Ministerial Council for National Security expressed its strong condemnation of the American bombing that targeted a site on our border with Syria, stressing that this attack represents a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, rejected by all international laws and covenants.
The Ministerial Council for National Security is studying resorting to all available legal options to prevent the recurrence of such attacks that violate Iraq’s airspace and territory, in addition to conducting a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances of the accident and its causes, and working to prevent it from recurring in the future.
The Council stressed its complete rejection of making Iraq an arena for settling accounts, or using its lands and skies to attack its neighbors, at a time when the government has strengthened its steps by adopting a calm policy, and adopting the principle of dialogue as a way to reduce the intensity of conflicts and achieve security and stability in Iraq and the region.
The Council affirmed that the government has continuous dialogue sessions with the American side, which have reached advanced stages and to the level of discussing the logistical details of the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, the details of which will be announced later.
With regard to targeting electric power plants and transmission towers by sabotage and terrorist armed groups, the Ministerial Council for National Security confirmed that at a time when electric power production began to rise and reached more than 20 thousand megawatts, which is the highest in the history of the Iraqi state, as well as the imported energy, and also the government’s opening of many stalled and lagging projects after overcoming the difficulties and problems that hinder them, in order to provide electric power to citizens, there are sabotage and terrorist groups seeking to confuse the situation by targeting stations and towers, which caused a loss of energy supplied to the areas in Baghdad and the Middle Euphrates, and exacerbated the suffering of the citizens.
The Council stated: “The security forces are making great efforts to protect the electric power towers, as the national grid contains 46,000 towers, and the cost of repairing each damaged tower reaches 30 million dinars, and there are arrears to investors in the billions, and to the countries from which we import energy and gas, and that these dues were not included in the budget, as some of the allocations were deleted during the parliamentary debate, at a time when the electrical network suffered from more than 35 sabotage attacks only in 2021, in addition to many other exposures and attacks, the latest of which was the assault on Salah Al-Din Thermal Station with missiles yesterday.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces instructed the Joint Operations Command to hold an emergency meeting within 24 hours, and to come up with an integrated strategy, in cooperation between the security leaders of the joint operations and the Ministry of Electricity, in order to ensure the smooth flow of electricity supply to the Iraqi citizen.
The meeting also called on citizens to cooperate with the security services to protect Iraq’s wealth and infrastructure from the tampering of saboteurs, stressing: “Our armed forces will respond to anyone who is tempted to tamper with the security of the citizen and harm the infrastructure.”
Source: National Iraqi News Agency