Syria war drags on due to foreign aid for Takfiri terrorists: Assad

President Bashar al-Assad says the crisis in Syria is mainly rooted in foreign support for extremist groups inspired by Wahhabism, a Takfiri ideology dominating the Saudi kingdom.

“You cannot talk about the war being over until you get rid of the terrorists in Syria,” Assad said in a Thursday interview with Italian TG5 channel.

“And those terrorists unfortunately still have formal support from many countries including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and many Western countries,” he added.

Assad described the recent liberation of Aleppo as “an important step toward ending the war.”

“If you do not have that external support to those terrorists, it will not be difficult at all to get rid [of] the terrorists everywhere in Syria.”

The Syrian president denounced the Wahhabism ideology as “the core problem” which creates extremist terrorists across the world and said, “If you want to deal with the issue of terrorism permanently, you have to deal with the pillar of that terrorism, which is the Wahhabi ideology.”