Assad still has ‘limited’ chemical capability: Pentagon

WASHINGTON: The Syrian regime remains able to conduct chemical attacks, though only at a limited level, the Pentagon said on Thursday following last week’s international cruise missile strikes on chemical weapons-related targets.

General Kenneth Mckenzie, director of the US military’s Joint Staff, said Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s regime retains a “residual” chemical capability at a variety of sites across the country.

“They will have the ability to conduct limited attacks in the future,” Mckenzie told Pentagon reporters.

“However as they contemplate the dynamics of conducting those attacks, they have to look over their shoulder and be worried that we are looking at them, and we will have the ability to strike them again should it be necessary.”

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said there was no indication the Assad regime was preparing to launch another chemical weapons attack.

“Assad must know the world will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons under any circumstances,” she said.

US military strikes on Syria last week removed any moral obligation Russia had to withhold S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems from its ally Assad, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday, according to RIA state news agency.

Lavrov was also quoted as saying that, prior to the US strikes on Syrian targets, Russia had told US oficials which areas of Syria represented “red lines” for Moscow, and the US military action did not cross those lines.

“Now, we have no moral obligations. We had the moral obligations, we had promised not to do it some 10 years ago, I think, upon the request of our known partners,” he said according to RIA.

He also said that he was convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump would not allow an armed confrontation between their two countries, RIA reported.

A Russian army commander has also said that Moscow would consider supplying S-300 missile systems to Syria following Us-led strikes.

Separately, federal authorities for the irst time are offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to Austin Tice, an American journalist who has been missing in Syria for more than ive years.

Tice, of Houston, Texas, who disappeared in August 2012 while covering Syria’s civil war was seen in a video released a month later.