US fires warning to Russia that it will step up air strikes on Syria
THE United States last night warned Russia that it was prepared to take further steps in Syria after a day of mounting tension between Moscow and Washington.
“The United States took a very measured step last night,” Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council, after a missile strike on a Syrian air base. “We are prepared to do more, but we hope it will not be necessary.”
The US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles from the USS Porter and USS Ross warships in the Mediterranean at the al-Shayrat base near the western city of Homs early yesterday morning. The Pentagon said the base was used to store chemical weapons after at least 86 people, including 33 children, were killed in a nerve-gas attack in rebelheld Idlib province earlier this week.
Donald Trump announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.
“Even beautiful babies were cru- elly murdered in this very barbaric attack,” he said, adding: “No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”
Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, told Mr Trump at a meeting between the two yesterday that he understood the reaction given the deaths of children, according to Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state. China has generally sided with Russia in defending Assad. The US plans to announce additional economic sanctions aimed at the Syrian regime in the near future in response to the chemical weapons attack, Steven Mnuchin, the US treasury secretary, said last night.
The US strikes provoked fury in Moscow, which diverted a warship to the Mediterranean to protect the
Syrian coast and vowed to bolster Bashar al-Assad’s defences against further US missile strikes.
The Admiral Grigorovich, a cruisemissile-carrying frigate, passed through the Bosporus en route to Russia’s Syrian navy base at Tartus.
The Russian ministry of defence said: “To protect key Syrian infrastructure, a range of measures will be taken to reinforce and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces air defence.”
Syrian aircraft took off from the base on combat missions within 24 hours of the strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, said last night.
The Kremlin also said it was suspending its air safety agreement with the US immediately. The memorandum is designed to avoid clashes in the crowded airspace over Syria, with each side giving the other warning over planned strikes.
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, said the attacks had fatally undermined Moscow’s initial trust in the new US administration and had brought the countries to “the verge of a military clash”.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, added: “This step by Washington inflicts considerable damage to US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state.”
Mr Peskov said Mr Putin, a staunch ally of the Syrian leader, regarded the US action as “aggression against a sovereign nation” on a “made-up pretext” and a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq.
Other world leaders praised the US strikes and urged Mr Putin to hold urgent talks with Mr Trump to prevent the crisis escalating.
Downing Street said it “fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks”.
Angela Merkel, the German chancel- lor, and François Hollande, the French president, said in a joint statement that “President Assad alone” must bear responsibility for the action.
Syrian military officials called the US strike an act of “blatant aggression”, saying it had made America “a partner” of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) as the base was used to conduct strikes against the jihadist group.
Six Syrian soldiers were reported to have been killed as the strike destroyed as much as 90 per cent of the base.
The Pentagon said it informed Russia of its plans to strike hours in advance, giving them time to remove any aircraft. Syrian military sources said they also received intelligence about the strike in advance and moved equipment out, in a sign the mission was intended as a show of force rather than a serious attempt to damage the Syrian regime’s air-strike capabilities.
A senior official from the Free Syrian Army called for international air strikes against all Syrian air bases. But the White House yesterday rowed back on suggestions of wider US involvement to overthrow the Assad regime.
Mr Tillerson is due to visit Moscow next week, where Russia said it will ask him to explain his position.