Damascus hits back at Donald Trump and likens the US to a “rogue” state or “terrorist group,” after the US president said he had wanted to assassinate Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad.
“Trump’s admission of such a step confirms that the US administration is a rogue… state,” Syria’s foreign ministry says in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.
“It pursues the same tactics as terrorist groups such as murder and assassination,” it says, one day after Trump made the remarks to the morning show Fox & Friends.
The US president said his then-secretary of defense Jim Mattis opposed the assassination of Assad in 2017.
“I would have rather taken him out. I had him all set,” Trump said.
“Mattis didn’t want to do it. Mattis was a highly overrated general, and I let him go.”
Trump was reportedly mulling assassinating Assad after the Syrian president allegedly launched a chemical attack on civilians.
— AFP
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