U.S. fires missiles at Syria
Dozens of Tomahawks strike air base in response to chemical weapons attack
PALM BEACH, Florida — The United States blasted a Syrian air base with dozens of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week’s chemical weapons attack against civilians.
U.S. President Donald Trump cast the assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking “to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.”
It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump’s most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago.
Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. “Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children,” Trump said.
The Tomahawk missiles hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The missiles hit at 3:45 this morning in Syria (5:45 p.m. Thursday in Victoria). The missiles targeted the base’s airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said.
The assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a “disgrace to humanity.”
PALM BEACH, Florida — The U.S. military launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield on Thursday, President Donald Trump’s first military action since taking office.
The strike, which hit a Syrian airfield in Homs province at 3:45 this morning in Syria (5:45 p.m. Thursday in Victoria), was launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, 24 hours after Trump criticized his predecessor, Barack Obama, for failing to confront Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2013 after another use of chemical weapons.
Pentagon officials said the U.S. had notified Russia in advance of the attack and had taken pains to avoid Russian casualties. But U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made it clear that the U.S. blamed Russia for failing to rein in Assad as required by a U.S.-Russia agreement that was to have led to Syria’s destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal.
“Russia has failed in its responsibility,” Tillerson told reporters in Florida. “Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement.”
Vladimir Safronkov, Russia’s Deputy UN ambassador, warned that negative consequences from the strikes would be on the “shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise.”
Speaking emotionally from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump condemned Tuesday’s deadly chemical attack by the Syrian government that killed at least 86 people.
The missile attack killed some Syrians and wounded others, Talal Barazi, the governor of Syria’s Homs province, told The Associated Press. He didn’t give precise numbers.
Syrian state TV called the attack an “aggression.”
U.S. Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Tillerson were all with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday.
Tuesday’s suspected chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Syria killed more than 20 children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britainbased monitoring group.
Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said the strike will not hasten an end to the Assad regime, but might deter its further use of chemical weapons.
“Nevertheless, this missile strike and the military action of our forces already in Syria, have yet to be authorized by Congress,” said Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Speaking before the U.S. attack, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered little hint about Canada’s role in any effort to remove Assad. But he expressed horror over the attack in Khan Sheikhoun.
“This is a war crime and the international community must stand firmly against such things,” Trudeau said Thursday after a day of meetings in New York with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Antonio Guterres, the new secretary general of the United Nations. He also participated in the annual Women in the World Summit.