Syria reports missile attack after Trump warns of ‘big price’ for gas attack
President says ‘big price to pay’ for alleged gas attack
Late Sunday, Syria reported a missile attack on an air base and said eight of them were shot down. The U.S. however said it did not launch the missiles. A suspected poison gas attack killed at least 40 civilians, including children.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump vowed Sunday there would be a “big price to pay” for an alleged poison gas attack that killed dozens of Syrian civilians and issued a rare public rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin for backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in the country’s vicious civil war.
Trump’s condemnation of the apparent chemical assault on the rebel-held Syrian town of Douma raised the prospect of U.S. military retaliation almost a year after he ordered a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base following a similar poison gas attack — a move that won Trump widespread praise.
Early Monday, Syria’s state-run news agency said the military’s air defenses confronted a missile attack on an air base in central Syria and shot down eight missiles. The report said the attack on a military airbase in Homs province “is likely to be an American aggression.”
But U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the U.S. had not launched airstrikes on Syria.
The Syrian news agency said the attack resulted in a number of casualties.
Trump’s homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, said Sunday that he “wouldn’t take anything off the table” regarding a possible military response to the illicit use of chemical agents and what he called “horrible photos” of its victims, including young children.
Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser both were forced out in recent weeks, so the issue is likely to be the top agenda item for John Bolton, a vocal supporter of using military power who is expected to take office Monday as national security adviser.
Russia’s military intervention in Syria more than two years ago helped turned the course of the civil war in Assad’s favor, and together with Iran, Moscow has emerged as a central power in determining Syria’s — and the region’s — postwar order.
“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world.”
In a highly unusual negative reference to the Russian leader by name, Trump added: “President Putin, Russia and Iran, are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!”
The White House later appeared to moderate Trump’s certainty about the Douma attack. After Trump spoke by phone with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a White House statement said they had discussed “possible chemical attacks near Damascus.”
In his own tweet, Vice President Mike Pence demanded a change in Assad’s “barbaric behavior” but noted that responsibility for what he called a “likely chemical attack” had not yet been confirmed.
In Douma, Syrian opposition activists and the Civil Defense White Helmets, a volunteer organization, described how entire families were found suffocated in their homes after the gas attack.
Activists and first responders released horrific images of dead or dying children that were widely circulated on social media.
Assad’s government denied responsibility, as it has in the past, and Russia on Sunday called accounts of a poison gas attack “bogus.”
The prospect of U.S. military action comes days after Trump — to the dismay of some senior advisers and the surprise of Pentagon officials — indicated he was considering a quick pullout of several thousand U.S. troops from Syria, which is in the eighth year of a grinding multisided civil war.
The White House later said U.S. troops would stay to defeat the remaining pockets of the Islamic State group, but multiple reports said Trump made clear that he wants the Pentagon to withdraw forces by next fall and hand over long-term stabilization of the warravaged country to Arab allies.
The Syria situation also underscores a paradox of Trump’s relationship with Putin. He has strenuously sought to maintain good personal relations with the Russian leader even as the administration has moved to punish oligarchs closely tied to the Kremlin, and as Washington and Moscow engaged in large-scale retaliatory diplomatic expulsions.
After British authorities had accused Moscow of using a lethal nerve gas against a former Russian double agent and his daughter in southern England last month, for example, Trump spoke to Putin by phone and invited him to the White House. No summit has been scheduled, but the White House said later that it has not been ruled out.
Then, on Friday, the administration finally announced sanctions mandated by Congress last year on members of Russia’s ruling elite for Russian cyberattacks and meddling in foreign elections, including the 2016 presidential campaign. The group included 17 Russian government officials, a state-owned weapons trading company and seven of the country’s richest businessmen.
Several of those put on the sanctions list had links to Trump’s campaign or to his associates who have come under scrutiny in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The group includes the wealthy son of a childhood friend of the Russian president and a billionaire who married his daughter.
Some senior lawmakers said Trump’s latest warning on Syria, as articulated on Twitter, may commit him to taking some action — much as he did last year.
On April 7, 2017, Navy warships launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria’s Shayrat air base for its role in a gas attack with sarin, a banned nerve agent, on the Syrian hamlet of Khan Sheikhoun. The president was spurred in part, the White House said, by images of stricken Syrian children.