U.S strikes Syria in response to chemical attack

UPDATE: The UN Security Council is meeting this morning to discuss the U.S. airstrike on Syria. The day after about 60 Tomahawk missiles rained down on a Syrian air base, from where a chemical weapons attack is thought to have launched earlier in the week, American allies expressed their support for the action.

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s office called the strike “an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.” France, Italy, and Israel also welcomed the strikes.

But the Kremlin, which supports the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, said the missile attack was an “aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law.”

“Washington’s move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was suspending cooperation with Washington on Syria. The two countries agreed in 2015 to share information about their activities in the country, where the United States was working to disable Islamic State (ISIS) as Russia fought with the Syrian government against antigovernment rebels.

In Geneva, the UN envoy for Syria said he would soon convene an urgent meeting of a Syrian cease-fire task force chaired by the United States and Russia. Staffan de Mistura said Russia requested the meeting, which was “agreed upon” by the United States.

The Syrian military said at least seven people died and nine were wounded in the strikes. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitor, said the seven included a general and three soldiers.

OUR EARLIER REPORT (04/06/17, 11:21 p.m.): Syrian state media confirmed U.S. missiles damaged an air base there today in the first direct American military intervention since the country’s grisly civil war began.

President Donald Trump ordered the strike in response to a chemical weapons attack on civilians earlier this week. Photos and video taken in the aftermath of the attack showed children and adults writhing in agony and struggling to breathe.

Trump announced the action from Florida, saying he had no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was behind the chemical attack that employed banned gases and killed dozens.

“Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children,” Trump said. The Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year, has resulted in casualties estimated in the hundreds of thousands and triggered the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

The attack on Syria represents an abrupt change in U.S. policy. Until this week, Trump expressed doubts in general about taking on humanitarian roles in foreign conflicts that wouldn’t put “America first.” He said earlier the United States should stay out of Syria and also worked toward greater cooperation on counterterrorism efforts with Russia, which backs the Assad regime.

The chemical attacks appear to have moved the president, who said today, “I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity.” He said the refugee crisis brought on by the Syrian civil war threatened the United States and its allies and called on “all civilized nations” to end the bloodshed in Syria.

The strike targeted the air base from where the chemical attack is believed to have been launched. U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea fired about 60 Tomahawk missiles at the base. Officials said the United States warned its allies in the region and Russia before the attack. The Russian government has not officially responded, but Russia’s Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov called the strike a “doubtful and tragic enterprise.”