WASHINGTON – President Trump unleashed airstrikes on Syria on Thursday to punish its strongman, Bashar Assad, after a chemical attack this week that killed dozens of civilians, including children. The barrage amounted to the most significant military operation ordered by Trump, a newcomer to governing who had warned, before taking office, against escalating America’s involvement in the Middle East.
“Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched,” Trump said in Palm Beach, Florida. “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.”
The operation — the first known direct American strike on Syrian government assets since the start of the country’s civil war — rained at least 50 cruise missiles from U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean on a Syrian airfield thought to be the point of origin for the chemical attack, U.S. officials said. The attack took place at 8:40 p.m. Eastern time.
The decision risked confrontation with Russia, Syria’s patron, which reportedly had troops stationed at the air base, and could mean increased dangers for hundreds of U.S. troops now in Syria to prepare for the assault on Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State militant group. But it also sent a dramatically different message about Washington’s willingness to use force in Syria after Barack Obama shied away from enforcing his self-imposed “red line.”
The decision to dramatically escalate America’s role in a conflict that has left some 500,000 dead, according to human rights groups, was arguably the new president’s biggest decision yet, with many unknown consequences. At home, the early response from Congress suggested strong bipartisan support for the strikes but deep concern about the way forward. Some in Congress, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said Trump should have sought authorization from Congress for a military operation that was not in response to an attack on the U.S.
Trump explained his decision by describing the horrific images from Tuesday’s chemical weapons strike in a mostly rebel-controlled area near the Turkish border, saying “there can be no dispute” that Assad’s forces were responsible.
“Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians,” he said. “Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack.”
So “tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched,” Trump said. “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.”
The president also urged “all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.”
Congressional Democrats offered measured support for the onslaught but warned that lawmakers would need to weigh in on any sustained escalation of the conflict. Some of the lawmakers delivering that message stood idly by while Barack Obama escalated America’s role in Iraq and Syria.
The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin of Maryland, said in a statement that “any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress.”
Cardin also pressed Trump “to inform the legislative branch and the American people about his larger policy in Syria, as well as the legal basis for this action and any additional military activities in that country.”
Trump had huddled with top advisers, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in Palm Beach, Fla., where he was to hold meetings Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a sign of how quickly events were unfolding, White House officials had said just a day earlier that McMaster would not travel with Trump.
Tillerson told reporters that the president had begun a long, difficult and potentially fruitless effort to push Assad from power.
“The process by which Assad would leave is something that I think requires an international community effort, both to first defeat ISIS within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country, to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving,” he said. Pressed on whether he and Trump were working to assemble an international coalition to achieve that goal, Tillerson replied: “Those steps are underway.”
The secretary of state also had tough words for Moscow, Assad’s patron. “It is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime,” he said.
And he reaffirmed what senior U.S. officials have said since the world first saw footage and photographs of gasping, dying or dead children in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province: Assad is to blame.
“There is no doubt in our minds and the information we have supports that Syria, the Syrian regime under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad, are responsible for this attack,” Tillerson said.
From The Guardian:
The UN coordinator for humanitarian affairs says it has no sign that U.S. military strikes against a Syrian air base have had “any direct consequence” on overall aid operations in Syria, reports the Associated Press.
Jens Laerke of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said such violence “is not a new feature” of Syria’s war, and cited continued UN-led efforts to reach people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas of the country.
The United States launched cruise missile strikes against Shayart air base in Homs province following a chemical attack in a northern village that U.S. officials and others have blamed on President Bashar Assad’s forces.
UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said Friday at a UN briefing that use of chemical weapons, if confirmed, would amount to a war crime
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “bears full responsibility” for the U.S. airstrikes against an air base in Syria, Reuters reports.
“The Syrian regime bears the full responsibility for this development,” Stoltenberg said in a statement.
“Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable,” said Stoltenberg, who was informed by the U.S. defence minister that strikes would go ahead.
From MSN:
President Vladimir Putin believes that U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base broke international law and have seriously hurt U.S.-Russia relations, Russian news agencies cited the Kremlin as saying on Friday.
The Russian leader, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, regarded the U.S. 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, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, was cited as saying.
The United States fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase earlier on Friday from which it said a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week.
Moscow had been hoping to cooperate with new U.S. President Donald Trump to jointly fight the Islamic State militant group in Syria, a move it was banking on to improve battered U.S.-Russia ties which are languishing at a post Cold War low.
But the U.S. action caused consternation in Russia, angering the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin lawmakers who suggested it had dealt a significant blow to any hopes of doing business with Trump.
“Putin views the U.S. strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext,” Peskov was cited as saying.
“Washington’s step will inflict major damage on U.S.-Russia ties.”
Peskov was also quoted as saying that Russia did not believe that Syria possessed chemical weapons and that the U.S. move would inevitably create a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to fight terrorism, an idea that Putin has repeatedly pushed.
Russia would now call for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the matter, the RIA news agency cited Viktor Ozerov, the head of the upper house of parliament’s defense and security committee, as saying.
No Russian citizens had been hurt in the strikes, another lawmaker said, while Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the upper house’s international affairs committee, said it looked like Trump may have been bounced into approving military action by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
“One way or another, Russian cruise missiles are continuing to strike terrorists and American ones government troops who are heading the war against the terrorists,” Kosachev wrote on social media.
“I fear that with these approaches the hoped-for U.S.-Russian anti-terrorism coalition in Syria … is breathing its last before it is even born.”
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/putin-says-us-strikes-on-syria-illegal-harm-us-russia-ties-agencies/ar-BBzvJhr?li=BBqdg4K&ocid=SK2MDHP
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-town-idUSKBN17917V
| PALM BEACH, Fla./MOSCOW/BEIRUT
PALM BEACH, Fla./MOSCOW/BEIRUT The United States fired cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-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 Assad’s military as punishment for the chemical weapons attack which killed at least 70 people.
That catapulted the United States into a confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground assisting its close ally Assad.
“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior 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.”
The swift action is likely to be interpreted not only as a signal to Russia, but also to other countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency.
(Source: Reuters)
12:16 From The Guardian:
Putin holds security council meeting
President Vladimir Putin has held a meeting of the security council to discuss the Russian response. “The participants expressed deep concern at the inevitable negative consequences of these aggressive actions for the joint efforts to fight terrorism,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov. He said the security council also expressed regret at the harm the strike would do to US-Russian relations, and they discussed ways to continue the Russian air force operation in Syria to give support to Assad’s army.
ADDED * APRIL:
Vladimir Putin has diverted a warship from a routine voyage to protect Syria against further US airstrikes – which has heightened fears of conflict between Russia and the West.
The Russian leader has sent the navy’s Admiral Grigorovich frigate to the Mediterranean to position itself between US ships that bombed a military airfield near Homs on Friday.
A Moscow source said the warship, armed with cruise missiles, was due to arrive in the Mediterranean later on Friday after it was moved from an exercise in the Black Sea.
They told Russian news agency TASS : “The Russian ship armed with cruise missiles Kalibr will visit the logistics base in Tartus, Syria.”
![Credits: Facebook/Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBzxd9t.img?h=373&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"} "Credits: Facebook/Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation - Provided by Trinity Mirror Plc")
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The Russian Defence Ministry added Syrian air defences would be beefed up after the US cruise missile attacks, according to local media.
The ministry was also cited as mocking the effectiveness of the U.S. strikes as “extremely low” saying that 23 missiles had hit their targets but it was unclear where 36 others had landed.
The moves come as the US launched up to 60 Tomahawk missiles from Navy ships in the Mediterranean on Thursday night.
It is believed they bombarded the Al-Shayrat airbase, south of the city of Homs.
Syrian state news claimed nine people were killed in the bombing which included four children. Six Syrian military jets had also been destroyed.
The military action sparked a furious response from the Russian President who appears to have become involved in preventing further conflict.
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While Syrian President Bashar al-Assad branded the bombing “reckless, irresponsible behaviour”.
The US launched it attack after blaming the Syrian regime for Tuesday’s chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people including many children.
Donald Trump promised tough action against the Syrian leader as he condemned the horrifying scenes which sparked international outrage
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Martin
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-39521332
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