Pentagon: Russia could have stopped Syria
WASHINGTON - Russia could have stopped its Syrian ally from conducting Tuesday’s poison gas attack that killed dozens of civilians but did not, U.S. officials said Friday.
That assessment, from a senior military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, went further than Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s accusation that Russia was incompetent in enforcing an agreement from 2013, under which Syria was to give up its chemical weapons.
The Trump administration is trying to stanch the deepening humanitarian crisis in Syria and prevent President Bashar Assad from using chemical weapons. Those actions come at the risk of increased friction with Moscow, which has supported the Assad regime and condemned the U.S. airstrikes.
The U.S. strikes were carefully designed to avoid hitting Russian personnel at the targeted Syrian air base, U.S. officials said Friday. They said the presence of as many as 100 Russians at the base used to launch Tuesday’s chemical attack raises questions about whether Russia knew about the attacks and failed to stop them. The Defense officials were not authorized to speak publicly about the operation.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer deflected questions about whether the United States sought to send a signal to Russia. “The actions that were taken were against the Assad regime, and I’m not going to say anything more than that,” he said.
President Donald Trump is “prepared to do more” to stop the civil war in Syria if Russia cannot convince Assad to abide by cease-fire agreements, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the U.N. Security Council on Friday.
“We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary,” Haley said.
The U.S. strike, launched at 7:40 p.m. ET Thursday and which Pentagon officials and Spicer called successful, led to a Syrian condemnation Friday morning. Assad’s government called it a “blatant act of aggression.”
Nine civilians were killed, including four children, when the projectiles hit the base and nearby villages, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.