U.S. Defense Department officials tell VOA that the U.S. has fired dozens of precision-guided missiles at Sharyat Airfield in Syria in response for a gruesome chemical weapons attack blamed on President Bashar al-Assad’s forces that killed about 100 civilians. It is the first direct U.S. assault on Syrian government forces.
A U.S. military official told VOA the ships launching the 59 Tomahawks were the USS Porter and USS Ross, both destroyers deployed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
A Navy official said the Syrian Airfield was targeted because it was most likely used to launch Tuesday’s chemical strikes, which U.S. offiicals believe was a nerve gas, possibly sarin. The official said forward-deployed ships in the Mediterranean allow for quick-strike capability.
U.S. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham released a statement shortly after the U.S. strike, saying, “We salute the skill and professionalism of the U.S. Armed Forces who carried out tonight’s strikes in Syria. Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin’s Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs.”
President Donald Trump told reporters at his presidential retreat in southern Florida that he ordered the strike, saying it was in the “vital national security interest” of the United States. He also called on all civilized nations to join the U.S. “in seeking an end to the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.”
This came as Trump entertained Chinese President Xi Xinping at the presidential retreat in southern Florida. Trump did not announce the attacks in advance, although he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday.
The surprise strike marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president appeared moved by the video and photos of children killed in that chemical attack, calling it a “disgrace to humanity” that crossed “a lot of lines.”
Flying to his talks in Florida with the Chinese president, Trump told reporters that what happened in Syria was “a disgrace to humanity,” and that with Assad “running things … something should happen.”
“What Assad did is terrible. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes, and it shouldn’t have happened and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” he said.
Trump added that he might “at some point” talk about Syria with its biggest military ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Last week, the White House backed away from the former Obama administration’s stance that Assad must be removed.
Tillerson: Assad must go
While Trump did not say whether he now thought, in the wake of the gas attack, Assad should be driven from power, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that Assad had to go. Tillerson told reporters there was “no role for him to govern the Syrian people” in the future.
“The process by which Assad would leave is something that requires an international community effort, both to first defeat ISIS [Islamic State extremists] 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.
U.S. officials said this week that there was no doubt the Syrian military was behind the apparent sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which also sickened 350.
Television pictures showed horrifying scenes — men, women and children foaming at the mouth, convulsing uncontrollably and struggling to breathe. Some families, including babies, died in their beds.
Alleged warehouse strike
U.S. officials rejected Russian and Syrian claims that the gas had come from a missile strike on a rebel-controlled warehouse where chemical weapons had been stockpiled.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said his country did not use chemical weapons during airstrikes on Khan Sheikhoun. He insisted they would never be used, “even against terrorists.”
But Dr. Annie Sparrow, a public health specialist and a critical-care pediatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York who has carried out many studies on Syria, said a “chemical cocktail” was used on the town. She gave this chilling assessment to the VOA Turkish service:
“It’s quite possible that Assad and Putin are using this … as a kind of experiment to test out new combinations of lethal chemical weapons.”
She said there was no way the Syrian rebels could have been responsible for the attack.
“Of course Russia and the Assad regime will deny this, because they know they are war crimes in the same way they deny attacks on hospitals and targeting civilians,” Sparrow said. “So they’re not going to fess up because they are war criminals conducting war crimes.”
Aya Fadl lies on a bed with an oxygen mask to heal breathing difficulties following a suspected chemical attack on her town of Khan Sheikhoun, in Idlib province, Syria, April 5, 2017. Aya had ran from her house with her baby and husband, thinking she could find safety from the toxic gas engulfing her town. Instead, on the street, she was confronted face to face by the horror of it.
Accusations ‘unacceptable’
The Kremlin said Putin, in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “underlined that it’s unacceptable to make unfounded accusations against anyone until a thorough and unbiased international investigation” has been conducted. But a Putin spokesman also said that Russia’s support for Assad was not unconditional.
Jordanian King Abdullah, meeting with Trump at the White House on Wednesday, said, “This is another testament to the failure of international diplomacy to find solutions to this crisis.”
Britain, France and the United States strongly condemned Russia on Wednesday during an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.
The fate of a draft U.N. resolution condemning the attack written by the three Western powers remained in limbo, as Russia’s envoy said at the emergency session he did not think the time was right for such action.
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