Post missile strikes, Trump says it's in US' interest to stop chemical weapons
Washington: The US military launched cruise missile strikes ordered by US president Donald Trump against a Syrian airbase controlled by president Bashar al-Assad’s forces in response to a deadly chemical attack in a rebel-held area, a US official said on Thursday.
The military targeted Syrian aircraft, an airstrip and fuel stations in its strike, the official said, adding the missiles themselves struck their targets at 3:45am in Syria on Friday.
Trump, speaking to reporters after the strikes, said the attack was in the nation’s “vital national security interest.” He said the United States must “prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons” and that there was “no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons.”
Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct US action yet in Syria’s six-year-old civil war, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran - Assad’s two main military backers.
Some 60 Tomahawk missiles were launched from US Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea, the US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A target was identified as an airbase in Homs. Further details on the target and the results of the strikes were not immediately known.
Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week’s chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack.
Trump, who was attending a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort, said earlier on Thursday that “something should happen” with Assad as the White House and Pentagon studied military options.
US military action put the new president at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assad’s side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups.
Trump has until now focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups.
The risks have grown worse since 2013, when Barack Obama, Trump’s predecessor, considered and then rejected ordering a cruise missile strike in response to the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s loyalists.
