Arab world’s reaction to strikes as League meets,

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad said western strikes on military installations only made him more eager to fight back against his opponents.

“This aggression will only make Syria and its people more determined to keep fighting and crushing terrorism in every inch of the country,” Mr Al Assad told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani yesterday.

Hundreds of Syrians gathered at landmark squares in Damascus yesterday, honking car horns and waving Syrian flags in scenes of defiance after the unprecedented joint air strikes by the US, UK and France.

Soldiers flashed the two-fingered victory sign near a car with pictures showing the president, his late father Hafez Al Assad and ally Hassan Nasrallah, who heads the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah.

While US President Donald Trump declared “Mission Accomplished” in a tweet, Syria distributed video of Mr Al Assad walking calmly into work carrying a briefcase.

“Good souls will not be humiliated,” Syria’s presidency tweeted after the air strikes began.

Russia, Iran and Hezbollah rallied around Mr Al Assad, warning the missile strikes would have consequences but stopping short of retaliatory threats.

Russia said none of the more than 100 cruise missiles fired entered airspace covered by Russian air defence systems, easing worries of an escalation into wider conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the Syrian attacks as an “act of aggression” but his statement did not mention retaliatory strikes.

“Russia will convene an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the aggressive actions by the US and its allies,” Mr Putin said.

There were no casualties, either Syrian or Russian, or serious damage inflicted, the Defence Ministry in Moscow said.

Mr Rouhani said yesterday that a missile attack would lead to destruction in the Middle East. “Such attacks will have no result but more destruction,” he told the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

“The Americans want to justify their presence in the region by such attacks.”

Hezbollah sharply condemned the missile attack, saying the western alliance would not achieve its objectives.

“America’s war against Syria, and against the region’s peoples and resistance movement, will not achieve its aims,” the group said in a statement published on its War Media Channel.

Meanwhile, influential Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr said the strikes would have “catastrophic repercussions on the region in general and Iraq in particular”, and called on people to join a protest in Baghdad today.

The US said Washington was prepared to “sustain” pressure on Mr Al Assad until he ended what Mr Trump called a criminal pattern of killing Syrians with banned chemical weapons.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday and said his country has “clearly condemned” the use of chemical weapons, AFP reported.

Mr Erdogan told Mrs May the only way to long-lasting peace in Syria was a “political solution”.

“Turkey considers the operation carried out early this morning by the US, UK and France to be an appropriate response to the chemical attack that caused the deaths of many civilians in Douma on April 7,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.

The Syrian government has repeatedly denied any use of banned weapons.

European Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Julien Barnes-Dacey said the impact of the strikes would be limited.

“This might send some immediate short-term message to Al Assad which could limit immediate re-occurrences, but I think the small nature of the strikes will essentially be seen as a slap on the wrist in Damascus as opposed to a more, deeper western commitment to really shift the regime’s behaviour,” Mr Barnes-Dacey told The National.

“One of the core problems with the strikes is it was entirely detached from any broader military or political strategy. Trump and Macron, in particular, had been so vocal in asserting that chemical weapons use was a ‘red line’ that they felt compelled to take action over and above developing a strategy that might actually be more effective in terms of establishing real deterrence.”

America’s war against Syria, and against the region’s peoples and resistance movement, will not achieve its aims HEZBOLLAH War Media Channel statement