FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pauses while speaking to members of the media following two days of meetings with Kim Yong Chol, a North Korean senior ruling party official and former intelligence chief, before boarding his plane at Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, July 7, 2018. Andrew Harnik/Pool/File Photo via REUTERS
August 31, 2018
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said the United States views the Syrian government military assault on the rebel-held province of Idlib as an escalation of the Syrian conflict.
“The U.S sees this as an escalation of an already dangerous conflict,” Pompeo said in a post on Twitter in which he also blasted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for “defending (the)Syrian and Russian assault.”
(Reporting by Leslie Wroughton and Yara Bayoumy; Writing by Susan Heavey)
