Trump backs down on missile strike threats against Syria

BEIRUT — President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to step back from an earlier aggressive stance on firing missiles at Syria, while some European nations debated their participation in any such military strike.

Trump, a day after taunting Russia, a key ally to Syrian President Bashar Assad, about its need to get ready for missile strikes in Syria, seemed to present a lesser sense of urgency about attacks in a new Twitter message.

“Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all!” Trump tweeted Thursday.

Russia has said it would shoot down any cruise missiles targeting Syrian government and military installations.

Russia’s military Thursday declared that Syrian government troops had taken control of the city of Duma, signaling the end of a widescale offensive to take back the rebel enclave in eastern Ghouta.

The announcement by Russia indicated that military police would be deployed Thursday to maintain order in the city, a Damascus suburb where a suspected chemical attack by the Assad government killed dozens of people during the weekend.

The city was in a transitional period toward coming under the control of Syria’s legitimate government, said Maj. Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko, head of Russia’s reconciliation center in the country, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

“Today marked a landmark event in Syria’s history,” Yevtushenko said. “The state flag was hoisted on the Duma building which signaled (Damascus’) control over this settlement and, hence, over all of eastern Ghouta.”

Activists, rescue workers and medical groups have accused Damascus of deploying chemical weapons during a ferocious offensive to subdue opposition fighters in Duma.

Damascus and Moscow vehemently denied responsibility for any gas attack and asked the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to inspect the site of the purported chemical strike, an invitation the group accepted Tuesday.

Many observers had expected an imminent missile strike after Trump tweeted Wednesday “Get ready ... because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’”

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor that tracks the violence in Syria via local activists, said concerns about a missile attack led to an alert for loyalist forces to abandon their bases.

Danny Makki, a Damascus-based journalist, said military airports, including Dumair, Shayrat and T4, had been emptied, with the bulk of the government’s air power moved to Russian bases or other secure locations.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who has repeatedly marked chemical weapons use as a “red line,” insisted in a television interview with TF1 channel that Paris had proof that chemical weapons were used by the Assad government. He did not elaborate.

Macron said a decision to strike would need to be taken “in due course, when we judge it most useful and effective.”