World slams US airstrike
– The world reacted with alarm yesterday after top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US strike in Iraq.
The assassination was praised by US President Donald Trump’s Republicans but, elsewhere, there were warnings of the danger it could inflame regional tensions.
Here are some of the reactions from around the world:
“Wow – the price of killing and injuring Americans has just gone up drastically,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a close confidant of Trump, wrote on Twitter.
“The killing of Soleimani... was an adventurist step that will increase tensions throughout the region,” the Russian foreign ministry was quoted as saying.
The killing of Soleimani risks provoking a “dangerous escalation of violence”, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
“America – and the world – cannot afford to have tensions escalate to the point of no return.”
“President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox,” former vice-president Joe Biden said in a statement.
“Iran will surely respond. We could be on the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East.”
“China has always opposed the use of force in international relations,” foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said in a press briefing.
“We urge the relevant sides, especially the United States, to remain calm and exercise restraint to avoid further escalating tensions.”
Iraq’s caretaker prime minister, Adel Abdel Mahdi, said the strike, which also killed an Iraqi commander, was an “aggression” that would “spark a devastating war”.
“We have woken up to a more dangerous world,” France’s Europe Minister Amelie de Montchalin told French radio.
The Syrian government accused Washington of trying to fuel conflict in the Middle East.
Syria is “certain that this cowardly US aggression will only strengthen determination to follow in the path of the resistance’s martyred leaders,” a foreign ministry official was quoted as saying by state news agency Sana.