Syrian airforce strikes town hit in gas attack

LEBANON: Residents of the Syrian town devastated by a chemical weapons attack last week said warplanes had returned to bomb them Saturday, despite a US missile barrage and warnings of possible further response.

At least 86 people in the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun were killed last week in a chemical attack that left hundreds choking, gripped by spasms or foaming at the mouth. Eyewitnesses and a monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that fresh attacks on the area - now a virtual ghost town - had killed one woman and wounded several other people.

Photographs from the site showed a pair of green slippers, abandoned near a blood-spattered doorway.

Residents cowered in bedrooms and basements throughout Saturday, underscoring the apparently unchanged threat they faced from the Syrian government’s arsenal of rockets, barrel bombs and other weapons that have resulted in a majority of the conflict’s half-million dead.

In retaliation for last week’s chemical assault, President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike on a Syrian air base housing a jet fleet responsible for extensive bombing across northern Syria.

The barrage of 59 tomahawk cruise missiles fired from two US ships is the first direct military action the United States has taken against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the sixyear-long conflict. Although Trump warned of possible further intervention, the Pentagon has said no other strikes against government targets are in current plans.

American officials had predicted that the missile strike would result in a major shift in Assad’s calculus, but the US attack appeared to be symbolic in reality. Within 24 hours of the strike, monitoring groups reported that warplanes were again taking off from the bombed Shayrat air base, this time to attack Islamic State positions.

There were also reports of Syrian government and Russian airstrikes across the provinces of Damascus, Aleppo, Idlib and Daraa, all killing civilians. However, there were no reports of further use of chemical weapons.

‘‘The American strikes did nothing for us. They can still commit massacres at any time,’’ said Majed Khattab, speaking from Khan Sheikhoun.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu described Trump’s decision to retaliate as welcome but not enough. ’’If this intervention is limited only to an air base, if it does not continue, and if we don’t remove the regime from heading Syria, then this would remain a cosmetic intervention.’’

Meanwhile, Russia and Iran, Assad’s most influential supporters, have rallied around him. Russia condemned the US missile strike and suspended an agreement that would minimise the risk of in-flight incidents between Russian and US military aircraft over Syria. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called for the formation of an international factfinding committee that ‘‘must not be headed by Americans.’’

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a global watchdog, said last week that that it had initiated contact with the Syrian government and was investigating the attack on Khan Sheikhoun. - Washington Post