In a brief statement Friday night, Pr*sident Trump announced that the United States, along with Britain and France, were striking Syrian targets in response to a poison gas attack a week ago that took the lives of more than 40 people in Douma, an eastern suburb of Damascus. That attack has been attributed to the government of Bashar al-Assad by the three allies and other sources. The New York Times reports that Trump indicated an openendedness to the latest strikes unlike the one-off strike with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on an air base a year ago:
“We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,” Mr. Trump said.
Russia, which has militarily supported al-Assad in the multi-sided 7-year-old civil war that has killed perhaps half a million Syrians, not only denied that Syria launched a chemical attack, but said without evidence Friday that Britain had staged it. It was unclear whether the Kremlin was saying Britain had engineered a chemical attack or that there was no chemical attack, just Britain’s claim of one.
Shortly afterward Trump began speaking, the Associated Press and other media reported that loud explosions had been heard in Damascus where the local time was 4 AM.
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis is saying the U.S. has struck Syria’s chemical weapons infrastructure.