Syria’s foreign minister yesterday denounced the American military raid on a Syrian village as an act of “criminal and terrorist aggression” and gave warning that troops would defend their territory if it were violated again.

Speaking on a watershed trip to London, intended to improve relations with Britain and through it, the Western world, Walid al-Muallem demanded an explanation from the US government for the attack.

A planned joint press conference with David Miliband to trumpet the new detente was cancelled at the last moment as British officials scrambled for information about the attack. Mr. Miliband had still not received an explanation from Washington before he went into the talks, and Mr. Muallem brought forward his own solo press conference to give his version of events.

Washington has refused to make any public comment on the incident, leaving only leaked remarks from anonymous officials to shed light on the unprecedented raid across the Syrian border, the route in for 90 per cent of Iraq’s foreign jihadists.

An unnamed US official said that the assault had killed a senior al-Qaeda agent responsible for smuggling foreign fighters and weapons across the border into Iraq. He identified the man as Abu Ghadiya, “one of the most prominent foreign fighter facilitators in the region” and part of a ring that had sent hundreds of young jihadists down the so-called rat run from the Syrian border into Iraq.

Mr Muallem, however, insisted that the attack on an unfinished building in al-Sukkariyeh had killed only civilians, among them a father and his three sons, as well as a security guard, his wife and a fisherman who was plying his trade nearby.

Mr. Muallem described two helicopters descending on al-Sukkariyeh, five miles from the Iraqi-Syrian border and disgorging American soldiers as two other craft provided cover. He claimed that all the eight, including three children, were shot from the ground in and around the construction site.

“All of them are civilian, unarmed, and they are on Syrian territory,” he said. “Syrian state television broadcast interviews from the hospital beds of survivors, including Suad Jassem, who claimed to be the wife of the slain security guard. She said her husband had been shot dead in front of her and her children. “We were taken by surprise yesterday...when two aircraft landed. American soldiers came out, some of them speaking Arabic, and they entered the tent where we live with my husband,” she said. “The soldiers fired at us for no reason and then at the workers inside the building as well as a fisherman who was close by. They then got back on the planes and took off.”

Adding to the confusion, reporters who reached the scene yesterday found only the bodies of seven adult males in the morgue and no sign of any dead children. The funerals of those seven took place yesterday amid angry scenes with hundreds of protesters joining grieving relatives in denouncing America.

The attack comes just days after a top US military official warned that foreign jihadists were operating openly across the border in Syria and pouring unchecked over the border, despite a recent fall in their numbers.

Mr. Muallem, however, blamed the Americans for not helping Syria to police the border by sharing intelligence and equipment. “You need a partner on the other side to control his side of the border,” he said. “We don’t have a partner on the other side of the border to share information.”

Washington’s decision to “take matters into their own hands” suggests US generals are wary of entrusting such intelligence to Damascus and relying on them to act on it after their experience in Afghanistan.

The US military lost much ground in the war in Afghanistan as a result of Pakistan’s long double game with Washington over rooting out militants on its side of the Afghan border before George Bush finally authorised the current controversial strategy of launching raids into Pakistani tribal areas.

The American official denied there was any significance in te timing of the attack on the eve of the London visit and just one week before the US presidential elections. “Look, when

you’ve got an opportunity, an important one, you take it,” the official said. “That’s what the American people would expect, particularly when it comes to foreign fighters going into Iraq, threatening our forces,” the official said.

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