We have sent you dozens of letters, the most recent of which were our identical letters of 21 February 2018 (S/2018/152), regarding the massacres of Syrians that the so-called international coalition has perpetrated. Further to those letters, I should like to inform you that, on Sunday, 25 February 2018, this coalition, which is led by the United States of America, perpetrated two more massacres of Syrian civilians when its warplanes bombed civilian homes in the villages of Sha‘fah and Zahrat Alluni in the eastern countryside of Dayr al-Zawr governorate, killing 29 civilians and causing severe injuries to dozens of others, the majority of whom were women and children. The bombing also damaged civilian homes and property, as well as the villages’ infrastructure.

The coalition continues to perpetrate massacres of the Syrian people. Indeed, the number of those massacres is now countless. The coalition also continues to support the remnants of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and is striving to reconstitute them as separatist proxy militias of the United States in Hasakah, Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr governorates. Such conduct confirms that the sole aim of this coalition that flouts international law is to undermine the sovereignty and territorial unity and integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic, and to prolong the Syrian crisis.

The Syrian Arab Republic calls upon the Security Council to fulfil its responsibility to maintain international peace and security, and to act immediately to put an end to the war crimes and crimes against humanity that the coalition perpetrates against the Syrian people, and to prevent the coalition from committing such crimes again. The Council must also act to end the illegal presence of American forces in Syrian territory and prevent the United States from carrying out its underhanded schemes to partition the Syrian Arab Republic and plunder its resources. It is imperative that the Council should do so now that this latest American crime, as well as the crimes that the United States committed in its annihilation of Raqqah, have revealed the true nature of the American Administration’s policies. Those polices must be condemned and the persons responsible for them exposed.

I should be grateful if the present letter could be circulated as a document of the Security Council.

Bashar Ja’afari