Shafaq News/ The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi, chaired an emergency meeting for the Ministerial Council for National Security in the wake of the U.S. airstrikes on a military site near the Iraqi-Syrian borders.

According to a readout issued by al-Kadhimi's office, the meeting also touched upon the recent attacks on power plants and transmission towers.

The Council, according to the output of the meeting, lambasted the U.S. attack, deeming it "a flagrant violation of the Iraqi sovereignty that is refused by all the international laws and accords."

"The Council is considering all the available legal options to preclude the recurrence of similar deeds that violate the land and airspace of Iraq, conduct a comprehensive investigation in the circumstances and motives of the incident, and work to prevent future recurrences."

The Council expressed its complete rejection to render Iraq an arena for score-settling or using its land and airspace to attack neighboring countries, shedding light on the Iraqi Government's poised approach that pursues dialogue as a means to ease tensions and maintain the stability and security of the Region.

"The Government holds continuous dialogue meetings with the U.S. side. It has reached an advanced stage, a level at which it is discussing the logistic details of the departure of the combat forces from Iraq."

"At a time the power production began to hike and reached 20 thousand MWs, which is the highest in the history of the Iraqi state, in addition to the imported quantities and inaugurating many suspended and lagging projects, terrorism and sabotage groups are trying to tamper with the situation by targeting plants and transmission towers, causing power outages in Baghdad and the middle Euphrates, and exacerbated the sufferings of the people."

"Security forces spare no effort to protect the power towers. The national grid contains 46 thousand transmission towers, and the maintenance of a damaged tower costs nearly 30 million dinars. Moreover, financial receivables to investors and electricity and gas supplying states amount to billions."

"These receivables were omitted in the deliberation of the budget, at a time the national grid inflicted 35 vandalism acts in 2021 only, besides many attacks, the last of which was the rocket attack on the Saladin Thermal Power Plant." 

The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces instructed the Joint Operations Command to hold an emergency meeting within 24 hours to devise a comprehensive strategy in cooperation with the Ministry of Electricity to attain a streamlined power supply. 

The meeting urged the citizens to "cooperate with the security authorities to protect Iraq's resources and infrastructure from vandalism. Our security forces will respond to whoever might be tempted to tamper with the citizen's security and infrastructure."