US fires missiles at Syria airbase

The United States has attacked and fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian air base with 59 cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea in response to a deadly chemical weapons attack launched this week which it blamed on Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Trump ordered the attack a day after he blamed Assad for this week's chemical attack in Syria, which killed at least 70 people, many of whom are children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. But the Syrian government denied it was behind the attack.

US president, Donald Trump later announced that he ordered the attack, targeting a government-controlled air base in Syria.
"Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said as he announced the attack.


President Trump said the strike was in the “vital national security interest” of the United States and called on “all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. And also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.”

“We ask for God’s wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world,” he continued.

“We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed and we hope that as long as America stands for justice then peace and harmony will in the end prevail.”

A US official has said Syrian government aircraft killed dozens of civilians by using chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin, earlier this week.

According to Reuters, Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the missile strikes on a Syrian air base broke international law and have seriously hurt US-Russia relations, news agencies cited the Kremlin as saying.

Putin sees the US action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext" and as a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited as saying.

US officials said they informed Russian forces ahead of the missile attacks and that they took pains to avoid hitting Russian troops at the base, saying there were no strikes on sections of the base where Russians were present. But they said the administration did not seek Moscow's approval.

Reuters