MOSCOW. March 5 (Interfax) - Moscow has condemned Monday's attack on a column of Syrian servicemen who were returning to Syria from Iraq, which left 48 Syrians and 9 Iraqis dead.
"Moscow is outraged by the criminal attack in Iraq," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a commentary on Tuesday.
"The inner Syrian conflict is going beyond Syria, directly threatening the security of the neighboring countries. Too bad. It is extremely dangerous that terrorists are operating with increasing freedom in the cross-border space," the diplomat said.
"All this, in our opinion, requires stronger efforts to facilitate dialogue between the Syrian government and opposition, and emphasizes the necessity to end any violence immediately and to give resolute rebuff to terrorism on the basis of respect for the sovereignty of all countries of the region," Lukashevich said.
Forty-eight Syrian servicemen and nine Iraqi police were killed and several other Syrian and Iraqi military personnel were wounded in Iraq on Monday, earlier reports said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said, citing Iraqi officials, that Syrian servicemen, among them wounded soldiers, found refuge in Iraq as fighting was on between the Syrian government troops and militants at the Syrian border vent Yarubiya at the juncture of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. After the wounded soldiers were given medical attention the decision was made in Iraq to send them back to Syria. As they were moving through the Anbar province an attack was launched against the unarmed people and an Iraqi convoy that was accompanying them, which deteriorated into bloodshed. Iraq blamed terrorists that had crossed into Iraq from Syria for the attack.