Innocent deaths likely to continue
For all the firepower, humanitarians wondered how this operation would deter Assad when last year’s “pinprick” attack did not.
“I want to be hopeful, but I’m not sure I can be,” Shadi Martini, director of humanitarian relief at the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees, told the Daily News. “We saw the same attacks last year and here we are again. At the same time, all we have is hope that this time is different.”
Martini and others said the U.S. must take a leading role in efforts to end the conflict in Syria diplomatically.
“We need a clear strategy from the Western powers,” he said. “We have to try to force the other side to come to the table and find a political solution that will allow Syrians to feel safe in their own country.”
But gauging Trump’s sincerity about Assad’s brutality or chemical weapons abuses is difficult when the U.S. has reduced the number of Syrian refugees it allows into the country.
So far this year, the U.S. has only resettled 11 Syrian refugees.
In 2016, the U.S. resettled 15,479, according to State Department figures.
Over 5.4 million people have fled Syria since 2011, according to the UN refugee agency.
The suspected chemical weapons attacks, coupled with the refugee crisis and the international fight against terror groups like ISIS operating in parts of the country, has turned the Syrian war into a global conflict involving two of the largest superpowers.
The Pentagon said it gave no explicit warning to the Kremlin ahead of the attack, but the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, John Huntsman, said in a video, “Before we took action, the United States communicated with” Russia to “reduce the danger of any Russian or civilian casualties.”
Days earlier Trump told Russia to “get ready” as he weighed a military strike.
A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the targeted sites had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia.
Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, reiterated Saturday that “such actions will not be left without consequences.”
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