Syria Air Strikes: Trump Defends Claiming ‘Mission Accomplished’

Chemical probe to begin in Syria after Western strikes

US President Donald Trump has defended his use of the term “mission accomplished”, accusing the “fake news media” of seizing on the term to demean the strikes, carried out in response to an alleged Syrian chemical weapons attack.

His response came on the heels of the criticism that trails US, UK and French strikes on targets in Syria, BBC reported on Sunday.

Ex-President George W Bush was widely ridiculed after appearing in front of a banner with the term in the Iraq war.

Russia and Syria insist no chemical attack took place on 7 April.

They have said the attack in Douma, in the Eastern Ghouta area near the capital, Damascus, was staged.

Meanwhile, international inspectors began work Sunday at the site near Damascus of an alleged chemical attack that prompted the unprecedented wave of strikes, AFP reported.

US, French and British missiles destroyed sites suspected of hosting chemical weapons development and storage facilities, but the buildings were mostly empty and the Western trio swiftly reverted to its diplomatic efforts.

Washington trumpeted the “perfectly executed” strike, the biggest international attack on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime during Syria’s seven-year war, but both Damascus and Syria’s opposition rubbished its impact.

Assad on Sunday denounced a “campaign of deceit and lies at the (United Nations) Security Council” after a push by Moscow to condemn the strikes fell far short.

Syria and its Russian ally are “waging a single battle -- not only against terrorism, but also to protect international law based on the respect of the sovereignty of states and the will of their people”, Assad’s office quoted him saying during a meeting with Russian politicians.

The inspectors, consisting of chemical experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague, arrived in Damascus hours after the strikes.

They have been tasked with investigating the site of an April 7 attack in the town of Douma, just east of the capital Damascus, which Western powers said involved chlorine and sarin and killed dozens.

“The fact-finding team arrived in Damascus on Saturday and is due to go to Douma on Sunday,” Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ayman Soussan told AFP.

But the Western powers, who had earlier signalled that they hadno further plans for further missile strikes on Syria, have vowed to assess their option should Damascus use chemical weapons again, Reuters reported UK foreign minister as saying on Sunday. This was as debate raged over the legality and effectiveness of the raid.

In Damascus, Syria’s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad met inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW for about three hours in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official.