U.S. STRIKES SYRIA
Tomahawk missiles hit airfield tied to chemical attacks as Trump calls on all nations to ‘end the slaughter’
The United States blasted a Syrian air base with cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week’s chemical-weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deterring future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking “to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.”
It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump’s most dramatic military order since becoming president. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that Trump’s predecessor spent years trying to avoid.
Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said killed dozens.
“Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.” President Trump
WASHINGTON President Trump ordered a cruise missile strike against Syria early Friday in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack against a Syrian town that killed 86 people Tuesday, according to the Pentagon.
The attack, the first conventional assault on another country ordered by Trump, came a day after he declared that the chemical weapons assault had “crossed many, many lines,” including the deaths of 27 children.
“It is in the vital national security interest of the United states to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons,” Trump said Thursday night at Mar-a-Lago, the resort he owns in Palm Beach, Fla. “Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.”
Trump condemned Syrian President Bashar Assad, saying he “choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children.”
The missiles, fired from a U.S. Navy vessel in the Mediterranean Sea, struck multiple sites, including the airfield where Syria based the warplanes used in the chemical attack, a Defense official said.
The attack essentially follows a plan the Pentagon set in September 2013, according to a senior Defense official not authorized to speak publicly about the operation. That plan was devised after President Obama set a “red line” on the use of chemical weapons. Syrian President Bashar Assad used the weapons that killed 1,400 civilians, but Obama did not order an attack. Instead, Assad
agreed to turn over his stockpiles of chemical weapons, a pledge he reneged on.
In 2013, military planners planned to use land-attack cruise missiles launched from Navy destroyers cruising off shore from Syria. For weeks, the Navy had four destroyers floating off shore, waiting for the order to strike.
Using ships negates the need to seek permission from countries where U.S. warplanes are based. Land-attack Tomahawk missiles can travel 1,500 miles to strike their target and carry a warhead with 1,000 pounds of conventional explosives.
Among the target options Pentagon planners developed for Trump: the airfield, military command-and-control centers, air defense systems and troops.
Any attack puts at risk the hundreds of U.S. special operations troops in eastern Syria who advise local ground forces in their fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS. The concern, according to the official, is that Assad could order a counterstrike, targeting the Americans. There is also the risk that the attack could kill Russian troops who have been supporting the Assad regime.
The Pentagon, which has been bombing ISIS targets in Syria since 2014, can provide extra air patrols to protect those troops, but they still would be vulnerable to attacks by surface-to-surface missiles fired by Syrian forces.
The strike followed an attack on a rebel-held city in northern Syria with apparent chemical weapons that killed at least 86 people, 27 of them children. Autopsies on three Syrians who died after being brought to Turkey for treatment suggest the banned nerve agent sarin was used in the attack, the Turkish Health Ministry said. Turkey, which also is involved in the fighting, has long pushed for Assad’s ouster.
Russia said the deaths were caused by a Syrian strike on a terrorist chemical lab, but the United States, other nations and human rights groups rejected that claim as baseless.
Russian officials warned against military strikes. “We have to think about negative consequences, negative consequences, and all the responsibility if military action occurred will be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise,” said Vladimir Safronkov, Russia’s deputy envoy to the United Nations.
Trump had long shared that opinion. He had previously urged the United States to support Assad against rebel groups fighting him, many of which are aligned with alQaeda. In 2013, he criticized Obama for contemplating strikes without getting congressional approval.