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The Turkish and Syrian ambassadors clashed Thursday at their first U.N. Security Council encounter since Turkey launched a cross-border offensive earlier this month, The Associated Press reported.

Turkey's ambassador, Feridun Sinirlioglu, called it a limited counter-terrorism operation “to eliminate the longstanding existential terror threat along our border with Syria” and “to enforce Syria's territorial integrity and unity.”

Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told council members his government “condemns in the strongest terms the Turkish aggression, and vehemently rejects attempts by the Turkish regime to justify its actions under the pretext of self-defense or countering terrorism.”

According to the source, the council met on Syria's humanitarian situation, but the members' top concerns were the state of a Russian-Turkish cease-fire agreement that divides up the border region and prospects for next week's first meeting of a committee that is supposed to draft a new Syrian constitution.