“We urge the parties concerned to fulfil their ceasefire commitments, resolve disputes through peaceful means … and promote the early restoration of peace,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a regular news briefing when asked for China’s reaction.
The call came after US forces attacked missile sites in the country’s south and boats trying to lay mines on Monday, US Central Command said, threatening a fragile ceasefire and casting new doubt on a deal to end the Middle East war.
It also came as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday that they had downed a US drone and shot at other aircraft entering the country’s airspace.
US military aircraft “entered Iranian airspace in the Persian Gulf region, and air defence units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … identified and shot down an MQ-9 drone,” the Guards said in a statement on their Sepah News website.
The Guards forces “also fired upon an RQ-4 drone and an intruding F-35 fighter jet,” the statement said, without specifying when the incidents took place.
The US strikes and Iranian defensive action came as the Middle Eastern country’s top negotiators arrived in Doha for the latest round of talks to end the months-long conflict and as the Israeli military stepped up hostilities with Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said on Tuesday that regional countries would no longer be shields for US bases, in a written statement carried by state television.
“What is certain in this regard is that the hands of time will not turn backwards, and the nations and lands of the region will no longer serve as shields for American bases,” said Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since he took office in March, in a message marking the Eid al-Adha holiday.
He said the United States was losing influence in the region, “moving further and further away from its former status with each passing day”. (AFP)
Edited by Tony Sabine