Monday, March 24, 2003
US missile hits Syrian bus, five killed
Associated Press Damascus, March 24
At least five people were killed when a US missile hit a Syrian passenger bus near Iraqi border on Monday, according to official Syrian news agency.
No US military comment was immediately available. The agency reported that the air-to-surface missile hit the bus Sunday morning on the Iraqi side of the border.
The bus was carrying Syrians fleeing the war in Iraq, the agency said. A spokeswoman for the US Central Command said that US forces did not target
civilians, and that their targeting was done very carefully, using precision-guided missiles, to select military targets.
The Syrian agency said that the wounded were taken to a Syrian hospital on the Syrian-Iraqi border, while the dead were sent to a hospital on the outskirts of Damascus.
Syria, which strongly opposes the US-led war on Iraq, has repeatedly called for a peaceful solution of the Iraq-US dispute over Baghdad's weapons arsenal.
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