An unprecedented US airborne attack on a Syrian village was intended to send a warning to Damascus to take stronger action against Iraq-bound foreign jihadists operating on its soil, according to a senior official in Washington.

“You have to clean up the global threat that is in your backyard — and if you don’t do that, we are left with no choice but to take these matters into our own hands,” the official told reporters, on condition of anonymity.

There has been continued official silence from the Pentagon and the State Department regarding the raid on Sunday. Syria has insisted that US troops killed innocent civilians.

After a Cabinet meeting in Damascus yesterday it was reported that the Syrian Government had ordered the closure of an American school and a US cultural centre in Damascus. However, US officials said that Abu Ghadiyah, the Iraqi national targeted and allegedly killed in the attack, had run a network channelling foreign fighters, weapons and funds into Iraq since 2004. Abu Ghadiyah, whose full name was Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidh, was appointed as an al-Qaeda commander by the organisation’s late founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“He ran one of the largest and most productive foreign fighter networks out of Syria and was directly responsible for hundreds of foreign fighters who killed thousands,” the American official said. Syria had the opportunity to deal with the jihadist problem, he said, but “eventually you can’t wait for guys like that to come back across the border and kill scores of Iraqis or, worse, your own forces”.

The timing of the attack startled many, coming so soon after American praise for Syrian efforts to stem the flow of jihadists over the border. While the number of foreign fighters crossing over has fallen to 20 a month from 120 a month last year, analysts say that Damascus has done little to stop money and weapons reaching Iraq.

Intelligence officials in Washington said the CIA had hurriedly ordered the raid at the weekend after confirming Abu Ghadiyah’s location in the village of al-Sukkari, in the Abu Kamal area. Two dozen American commandos flew to al-Sukkari in four Black Hawk helicopters and disembarked, fighting a brief gun battle with Abu Ghadiyah and members of his cell.

Officials said it was unclear whether Abu Ghadiyah had died on the battlefield or after being taken into American custody.

Despite Syrian outrage and the threat of retaliation by Syrian troops, officials did not rule out mounting such a raid again. However, an Iraqi government spokesman condemned the strategy. “The Iraqi Government rejects US aircraft bombarding posts inside Syria. The Constitution does not allow Iraq to be used as a staging ground to attack neighbouring countries,” Ali al-Dabbagh said. Much of what the US knows about the Syrian link comes from intelligence gleaned from a raid on a suspected al-Qaeda house in Sinjar, on the Iraqi side of the border, in the summer of last year. Documents there revealed names and details of more than 500 foreign fighters who had entered from Syria, and of at least 95 Syrian “co-ordinators” who helped to channel the jihadists across the border. Many were active in the smuggling trade and appeared to be motivated by money rather than any ideological sympathy.

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