The 2008 Abu Kamal raid was an attack carried out by helicopter-borne CIA paramilitary officers from Special Activities Division and United States Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations Command inside Syrian territory on October 26, 2008. The Syrian government called the event a "criminal and terrorist" attack on its sovereignty, alleging all of the reported eight fatalities were civilians. An unnamed U.S. military source, however, alleges that the target was a network of foreign fighters who planned to travel through Syria to join the Iraqi insurgency against the United States-led Coalition in Iraq and the Iraqi government. Background Throughout the Iraq War, Syria had reportedly served as a conduit for foreign fighters intending to enter Iraq to fight the US, coalition, or Iraqi military and police forces. The Los Angeles Times reported that some US officials had complained that militants and their reinforcement and logistics networks have been able to operate openly in Syria and that the Syrian government had not made sufficient effort to stop it. The New York Times however reported that the timing of the raid was startling partly because American officials have praised the Syrian government in recent months for its efforts to halt traffic across the border. In 2007, US General David H. Petraeus credited Syria in "large part" due to its "robust interdiction efforts" against the infiltrators, as well as Major Adam Boyd who stated in 2008 that Syria was being cooperative arresting fighters on their side of the border, however he also noted instances of local corruption in both Syrian and Iraqi border patrol units. The US alleged that the militants flew into Damascus and then, with the help of emplaced networks, travelled across the Syrian border into Iraq, mainly through the city of Ramadi. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied these claims, while he admitted some militants do come into Syria through Damascus International Airport without knowledge from Syrian authorities, he claimed that the majority of militants crossed into Syria from the borders of neighboring countries. Neither claims could be confirmed due to the limited information on what routes the foreign fighters took to get into Syria. According to the US military, the foreign militants were responsible for 80% to 90% of the suicide attacks in Iraq, mainly targeting Iraqi civilians. In the summer of 2007, a US military raid on a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq house in the Iraqi town of Sinjar,