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West must stop its support for terrorists: Velayati

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A senior Iranian official says certain Western and Middle Eastern governments need to stop their support for terrorists operating in the region.

“The policy of supporting terrorists in the region, which is being pursued by certain Western and regional countries, must stop,” Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday.

Velayati warned that the “dirty flame of terrorism,” if fuelled, would not spare supporters of terrorist groups.

He also condemned last Wednesday’s deadly attack on the office of the French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, saying, “It does not make a difference whether the killing of innocent people happens in the Middle East region, West Asia or North Africa, Europe or anywhere else. Terrorism per se is reprehensible in view of the Islamic Republic,” Velayati said.
He added that the terrorist attack in the French capital, which left 12 dead, sets alarm bells ringing for Western and other countries that support terrorists directly or indirectly.

The Iranian official called on the international community to firmly counter terrorists to avoid repetition of such terror attacks.

On Wednesday, masked gunmen stormed the Paris headquarters of the satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo, gunning down a dozen people, including eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor.

Meanwhile, a policewoman on Thursday succumbed to injuries she sustained in a separate shooting in southern Paris, just a day after the deadly assault on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo.

On Friday, two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, who were suspects in the Wednesday shooting, were killed after being cornered at a printing workshop with a hostage in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris.

On the same day, police ended a second hostage-taking in a supermarket in the eastern Porte de Vincennes area of Paris, killing one armed hostage-taker, Amedy Coulibaly, who was a suspect in killing the policewoman in southern Paris on Thursday.

The ISIL Takfiri group, fighting the Iraqi and Syrian government forces, has claimed responsibility for the attacks, threatening to target the United States and Britain next. France is among the European countries that have thrown their weight behind militant groups in Syria.

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