N. Korea denounces deadly drone attack in Syria

Women react during the funeral of members of the Kurdish Asayish security forces, killed a day earlier in a Turkish drone strike, in the town of Amuda, in the northeastern Syrian Hasakah governorate, Oct. 7. AFP-Yonhap

North Korea on Monday condemned a deadly drone attack on a Syrian military academy, saying it opposes all sorts of terrorism.

"We strongly denounce the terrorist attack as an undisguised infringement on the Syrian people's desire for national sovereignty," a spokesman for North Korea's foreign ministry said in comments carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.

The spokesman did not specify the attack, but the remark was apparently referring to the drone attack on a military academy in Syria on Thursday, which is reported to have killed more than 80 people and injured over 100.

Syria is one of the few countries that have friendly ties with North Korea.

"Taking this opportunity, we reaffirm the consistent stand of the DPRK government against all sorts of terrorism," the spokesman said, referring to North Korea by the acronym of its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

North Korea has a track record of staging terror attacks against South Korea in the past few decades, including the 1987 midair bombing of a South Korean airliner near Myanmar that killed all 115 people aboard.

The attack prompted the United States to put North Korea on its terrorism blacklist, but Washington removed Pyongyang from the list in 2008 to facilitate talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. (Yonhap)