ISLAMABAD: The Awami Workers Party (AWP) has condemned the intensification of imperialist war in Syria and demanded an immediate halt to the hostilities being perpetrated both by the US-led western coalition and the Assad regime.

In a joint statement the AWP senior vice-president Yousaf Mastikhan and general secretary Akhtar Hussain expressed shock at reports of the loss of lives in Syria due to poisonous gas as well as US airstrikes and expressed sympathies with the victims’ families.

According to media reports at least 70 people, including 10 children, were killed due to suspected “nerve gas” during airstrikes in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province of Syria on Tuesday morning.

Seven more people were killed and many more wounded in a US missile attack on Shayrat airbase in central Syria. The US fired over 50 cruise missiles from the warships USS Ross and Porter in the eastern Mediterranean Friday morning.

The AWP leaders condemned the US airstrikes and described it as an invasion of a sovereign country.

They also condemned the extremist elements for using civilians as human shields.
The AWP leaders said that the world imperialist powers are creating, financing and using terrorist outfits for furthering their imperialist agendas in the Middle East and other developing countries in Asia and Africa.

They cited the examples of Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan and other countries where the imperialist powers through overt and covert operations destabilised secular and democratic governments and invaded these countries to grab their resources in the name of fighting terrorism.

The emergence of the so-called Islamic State (IS) and Al-Nusra Front are a direct result of the patronage of extremist elements by global powers, the AWP leaders said.

“This proves that the so-called ‘war on terror’ is a cynical and selective enterprise in which some extremist groups are targeted while others are actively patronized,” they added.

“In this context the notion of ‘non-state actors’ representing a threat to civilization becomes little more than propaganda used by powerful states to justify their desire to make profits from war while controlling the resources of the regions most devastated by imperialist war, particularly the Middle East,” the AWP leaders said.

According to UN estimates 400,000 people have been killed since the civil war broke out in 2011.