Putin up in arms over US Syria attack

Missile strike on airbase

PALM BEACH: The US fired cruise missiles yesterday at a Syrian airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapon attack had been launched. This has catapulted Washington into confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground aiding its ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

It was the first direct US assault on the government of Assad in six years of civil war.

In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency so far, Trump ordered the step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: directly targeting the Syrian military for its suspected role in a poison gas attack that killed at least 70 people

“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically,” Trump said as he announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese president Xi Jinping.

“Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,” he said of Tuesday’s chemical weapons strike, which Western countries blame on Assad’s forces. “No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”

Assad’s office said Damascus would respond by striking its enemies harder: “This aggression has increased Syria’s resolve to hit those terrorist agents, to continue to crush them and to raise the pace of action to that end wherever they are.”

US officials said the strike was a “one-off ” intended to deter future chemical weapons attacks and not an expansion of the US role in the Syria war.

The swift action is likely to be interpreted as a signal to Russia, as well as to countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency, that he is willing to use force.

“This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” US secretary of state Rex Tillerson told reporters. “I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There has been no change in that status.”

The Syrian government and Moscow have denied Syrian forces were behind the attack, but Western countries have dismissed their explanation that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike as not credible.

Syrian state television said nine civilians were killed in villages near the base.

“President (Vladimir) Putin views the US strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext,” said a Kremlin statement. “This step by Washington will inflict major damage on US-Russia ties.”

US officials said they had taken pains to ensure Russian troops were not killed, warning Russian forces in advance and avoiding striking parts of the base where Russians were present. – Reuters

PICTURE: REUTERS Activists of the Socialist Unity Centre of India burn an effigy of US president Donald Trump during a protest against the US air strikes in Syria outside the US consulate in Kolkata yesterday.

PICTURE: AP Dozens of members of a Turkish trade union carry coffins with images of victims in protest in Ankara against the chemical weapons attack that killed more than 70 people in northern Syria.