The Syrian government and its allies have absorbed a U.S.-led attack on Saturday and the targeted sites were evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia, a senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus said.
“We have absorbed the strike”, the official told Reuters.
“We had an early warning of the strike from the Russians ... and all military bases were evacuated a few days ago,” the official said. Around 30 missiles were fired in the attack, and a third of them were shot down, the official said.
“We are carrying out an assessment of the material damages,” the official added.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been backed in the seven-year-long Syrian war by Russia, Iran, and Iran-backed Shi’ite groups from across the region, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. (Source: Reuters)
The justifications put forward by the US, UK and France for the air strikes in Syria have focused on the need to maintain the international prohibition against the use of chemical weapons, to degrade President Assad's chemical weapons arsenal and to deter further chemical attacks against civilians in Syria, writes Marc Weller, Professor of International Law in the University of Cambridge and the editor of the Oxford University Press Handbook on the Use of Force in International Law, on BBC. Read on:
Prime Minister Theresa May argued that the UK has always stood up for the defence of global rules and standards in the national interest of the UK and of the organised international community as a whole.
However, in its formal legal defence of the operation issued some time later, the UK government rather emphasises the need to protect the population of Syria from further harm.
Legally, the claim to enforce international law on chemical weapons by violent means would return the world to the era before the advent of the UN Charter. The Charter allows states to use force in self-defence and, arguably, for the protection of populations threatened by extermination at the hands of their own government. The use of force for broader purposes of maintaining international security is also possible. However, such action is subject to the requirement of a mandate from the UN Security Council.
This arrangement tries to balance the need of states to preserve their security in the face of an actual or imminent attack through self-defence when strictly necessary with the need to ensure that force cannot be used as a routine tool of international politics. Hence, international law since 1945 precludes military strikes in retaliation - to teach other states a lesson, as it were - or by way of reprisal. Reprisals are acts that are in principle unlawful, but they can be excused because they aim to force a state back into compliance with its international obligations.
Hence, in 1981 Israel was condemned by the UN Security Council when it attacked the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq. Israel had argued that it might contribute to the production of weapons of mass destruction in the future. A US attack against an alleged chemical weapons facility in Sudan in 1998 in response to US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania was also criticised.
In this instance, the three states mounting the air strikes have taken it upon themselves to force Syria into compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Syria joined the Convention in 2013 as part of the diplomatic settlement that followed the failure of the UK, and the US, to go through with threatened air attacks after gruesome chemical attacks in Eastern Ghouta. The Convention prohibits the production, possession and use of chemical weapons. No fewer than 192 states have signed.
Syria was also subjected to additional duties contained in mandatory Security Council resolution 2118, reinforcing these obligations and providing for the destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile. In an impressive example of international co-operation, also involving Russia, this was largely achieved a year later, by September 2014.
Russian veto
However, since then, there have been some 40 recorded instances of alleged chemical weapons use in Syria. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has the ability to dispatch fact-finding missions to determine whether such weapons have actually been used.
A special joint mechanism was set up by the OPCW and the Security Council with a mandate to assign responsibility for such uses. However, after the mechanism pointed the finger at the Assad government last year, Russia vetoed its renewal.
An attempt to establish a new mechanism empowered to determine responsibility for the latest use of chemical weapons in Douma failed this week, again due to a Russian veto in the Security Council. Russia's own proposed investigatory mechanism, which was opposed by the Western states and others, would have lacked that power.
Supporters of President Assad were defiant after the air strikes
The three states intervening in Syria now argue that there was no prospect of obtaining a mandate from the Council to confront chemical weapons use by Syria. In striking Syria, they claim to have fulfilled an international public order function of defending the credibility of the prohibition of the use of chemical weapons in general terms, and enforcing Syria's obligations in particular.
This argument is somewhat reminiscent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, supposedly to enforce Baghdad's disarmament obligations imposed by the Security Council in the absence of clear Security Council authorisation. Moreover, in April of last year, President Trump launched 59 cruise missiles against the Syrian air-base at Shayrat. It was claimed that the installation had been involved in a chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun, again to restrain further chemical weapons use.
The blockage in the Security Council on Syria opens up some space for this kind of argument. The Chemical Weapons Convention provides for referral of grave instances such as the Douma attack to the Security Council for enforcement action. But the Council could not even agree on a mechanism to establish responsibility, not to speak of more decisive action to repress future uses of such weapons.
The claim of the three states involved to act instead of the Council, as the world's enforcement agent of a highly important international rule, is of course being resisted by some. Russia has already asserted that the attacks flagrantly violate the prohibition of the use of force. The UN secretary general has also emphasised the need to respect the primacy of the Security Council.
Humanitarian suffering
The arrogation of the functions of the Council by a group of states claiming to act in the common interest therefore reflects the reality of the present, little Cold War between Russia and the West. The breakdown of the consensus that facilitates the operation of collective security necessarily results in unilateral acts and, in consequence, further division.
In addition to the general interest in maintaining the obligation to refrain from chemical weapons use, Mrs May also referred to the protection of civilians from further chemical attacks to alleviate further humanitarian suffering. This, in fact, is a stronger and more persuasive legal argument in favour of the strikes.
In fact, the formal legal argument put forward by the UK government sometime after the prime minister addressed the nation does not rely on the claim to enforce the terms of the chemical weapons convention or of resolution 2118.
Theresa May made the humanitarian argument
In 2013, when the use of force was expected after the Ghouta attack, the UK already expressly invoked the doctrine of humanitarian intervention. A good argument has been made that states can act in cases of overwhelming humanitarian necessity that cannot be addressed by any other means to protect populations in danger of imminent destruction.
The doctrine of forcible humanitarian action gained credence throughout the 1990s when it was applied to rescue the Kurds of northern Iraq and the Marsh Arabs in the south of Iraq from destruction by Saddam Hussein. It was later employed unopposed in cases including Liberia and Sierra Leone.
However, international division about its application emerged in the wake of the operation on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians of 1999.
Since then, the UN has embraced the concept that international action can be taken to rescue a population under immediate threat. However, the doctrine of responsibility to protect (R2P) was narrowed down to cover operations mandated by the Security Council. Still, a number of states claim a right to act when the Council cannot.
Innocent civilians at risk of destruction should not pay the price for a political blockage at UN headquarters in New York. Others, including Russia and China, oppose humanitarian intervention.
The application of this doctrine is not restricted to uses of chemical weapons against civilian populations. However, given the uncontrollable and indiscriminate effect of chemical weapons, their use against civilians offers perhaps the clearest trigger for the application of this doctrine.
In this instance, the UK points to the history of repeated uses of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, adding that it is "highly likely" that further such attacks would follow. Given the failure of previous attempts to rein in this practice, and the present blockage in the Security Council, it is argued that no means other than the use of force were available to secure the humanitarian objective of the operation.
Moreover, it is asserted the force used was strictly limited and specifically targeted at objects connected with the objective of degrading the capacity to launch future chemical attacks and deterring such attacks in the future. These arguments conform to the legal requirements for humanitarian intervention.
It could also be argued that the attacks aim to preserve the national security of the states involved in the attacks, by way of an extensive right to self-defence. Diluting the protection stemming from the prohibition of the use of chemical weapons in recent practice posed a threat to all states.
Of course, every state may defend itself, under some circumstances even before an armed attack aimed at it has landed on its territory. But the attack must be imminent, leaving no choice of means and the response must be proportionate to the attack.
In the run-up to the Iraq war of 2003, there was the famous 45-minute claim concerning Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Laying the ground for an argument of anticipatory self-defence against a strike that might come in the future, the UK argued that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction might reach UK military bases in Cyprus with minimum warning.
But there was no evidence that Baghdad was contemplating such an attack and the argument was abandoned. Similarly, there is no suggestion in this instance that Syria was preparing to launch an attack against the US, UK or France.
Top administration officials on Saturday rallied behind President Donald Trump's declaration of "mission accomplished" in Friday night's strike on three Syria targets in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians in a Damascus suburb.
"A perfectly executed strike last night," Trump tweeted Saturday. "Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!"
A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!
Senior US officials echoed the President's assessment.
"Last night, operations were very successful," Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said at a briefing Saturday morning. "We met our objectives. We hit the sites, the heart of the chem-weapons program. So it was mission accomplished."
Vice President Mike Pence said the strikes, conducted in coordination with the United Kingdom and France, "degraded and crippled chemical weapons capabilities of Syria."
"I think the President's expressions this morning were a strong affirmation that the mission that he gave our military to go in and destroy key elements of the chemical weapons infrastructure in Syria was completely and professionally and swiftly accomplished," said Pence, who was on a foreign trip to Peru for the Summit of the Americas.
And, like Pence, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley emphasized that the United States is ready to keep pressure on Syria following military strikes that targeted the country's ability to use chemical weapons.
"The United States is locked and loaded," she said at an emergency UN Security Council meeting. "When our President draws a red line, our President enforces a red line."
Haley blasted Russia for protecting Syria and said that Moscow has emboldened Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to continue its attacks.
NATO also expressed "full support" for the strikes.
"I am not saying that the attacks last night solved all problems, but compared to the alternative -- to do nothing -- it was the right thing to," the alliance's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told reporters in Brussels on Saturday.
The Russian ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia, meanwhile, said Washington had embarked on an "illegal military venture."
"Russia condemns in the strongest possible terms the attack against Syria where Russian military personnel are assisting the legitimate country and their counterterrorism efforts," Nebenzia said, reading a statement from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Nebenzia also said recent inspections by the UN's Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found no "traces of activity that would contravene the chemical weapons convention" at scientific research facilities targeted in the strikes.
"The scientific facilities in Syria are used only for peaceful activity which is aimed at enhancing the economic effectiveness of economic activity of Syria," Nebenzia said.
Before the US launched its missile attack, international observers with the UN group had yet to reach the Damascus suburb of Douma, where the deadly attack took place. Experts arrived Saturday, the chemical weapons watchdog said on Twitter.
Pence said the US and its allies went into the effort "absolutely confident that the Syrian regime had conducted this attack, despite what some of their apologists around the world are saying, and high confidence that at minimum the chemical weapon of chlorine was used in this attack."
A senior administration official told reporters that the US has assessed that both sarin and chlorine were used in the chemical attack last weekend.
"We do have significant information that also points to sarin use," the official said, citing symptoms described in reporting from media, non-governmental organizations and other open sources.
Coordinated strikes
Trump announced from the White House on Friday night that the US, in coordination with France and the United Kingdom, had launched strikes on Syria following a week of threats of retaliation for an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians by the Assad regime. The strikes were launched at 9 p.m. ET, the early hours of Saturday morning for Europe and the Middle East.
Trump's remarks on Twitter Saturday are reminiscent of President George W. Bush's 2003 speech announcing an end to major combat operations in Iraq on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with a big sign that read, "Mission Accomplished" in the backdrop. Those words later took on an irony as the war dragged on, and at the end of his presidency, Bush called the use of the phrase "a mistake."
Trump had said Friday that the US is "prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents."
But US Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters Friday that the missiles were a "one-time shot" for now, and that the strike sent a "strong message" to "deter" Assad from carrying out another chemical attack.
"Clearly the Assad regime did not get the message last year. This time our allies and we have struck harder," Mattis said.
The Pentagon repeated Saturday that the President has the authority under the Constitution to defend US interests, but what happens next is up to the Assad regime and Russia. The US mission in Syria remains to defeat ISIS and not get involved in the country's civil war, White said.
Target assessments
A total of 105 missiles were launched in the strikes, according to the Pentagon. The strikes "successfully hit every target" and the allies "took every measure and caution" to only hit the intended targets, White said Saturday morning.
The Pentagon also said that it was not aware of any civilian causalities at the time.
Syria state TV, however, claimed that three civilians were wounded in Homs after "several" missiles were intercepted by Syrian air-defense systems.
Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, director of the Joint Staff, said that none of the aircraft or missiles involved in this operation were successfully engaged by Syrian air defenses, and there is no indication that Russia air defense systems were employed.
Syrian armed forces said in a statement, however, that the country's defense systems "intercepted most of the missiles, but some hit targets including the Research Center in Barzeh," a suburb of Damascus.
Russian Army Colonel Gen. Sergey Rudskoy put a number to the claim, telling reporters that 71 of the cruise missiles were intercepted by Syria's air defense systems.
"It proves high efficiency of the Syrian armament and professional skills of the Syrian servicemen trained by the Russian specialists," Rudskoy said at a Ministry of Defense media briefing. "Over the last 18 months, Russia has completely recovered the Syrian air defense systems, and continues its development."
The Pentagon assessed that nerve agents were present in the Barzah research center and that the Syrian regime employed about 40 surface-to-air missiles, but those launches occurred after the last impact of the US and its allies' strike.
White also said Russia has begun a disinformation campaign on the situation.
"There has been a 2000 percent increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours," White said.
"Therefore, we will keep you all abreast of the facts moving forward."
Defense Secretary James Mattis said Friday night that the US was expecting a disinformation campaign by those aligned with the Assad regime.
On Friday night, Trump repeated the claim that last year's attack "destroyed 20 percent of the Syrian air force," but that has never been verified.
Almost exactly one year ago, the United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government airfield in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 100 people.
President Donald Trump proclaimed that the April 6, 2017, airstrike was in the “vital national security interest of the United States,” and images of U.S. destroyers launching missiles into the night sky were seen on televisions around the world.
But on balance, according to U.S. national security and military analysts, last year’s action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime did little to stop the bloodshed that has raged in that civil war-torn country for nearly a decade.
On Friday night, Trump repeated the claim that last year's attack "destroyed 20 percent of the Syrian air force," but that has never been verified.
“The general consensus was that it was not an effective strike,” Kevin Baron, a national security analyst for NBC News, said on Friday. “The United States sent a lot of firepower to one runway, but the Syrian government was able to quickly rebuild and reuse it.”
A month after the 2017 airstrike, the Syrian military began moving fighter aircraft and personnel back to Shayrat Airfield in Homs and repaired some of the damaged infrastructure, three U.S. defense officials told NBC News at the time.
And, as last week’s suspected nerve agent attack in the city of Douma seems to show, the U.S. action did not deter Assad from again using chemical weapons against civilians.
The strikes had “absolutely no impact whatsoever on the course of the war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people,” Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a military analyst for NBC News, said on Friday night.
“It did make a strong, useful statement to the world. But there have been as many as a dozen subsequent chemical attacks on unarmed civilians, so it clearly had no deterrence aspect.”
All but one of the missiles launched that night hit their intended target, a U.S. military official told NBC News at the time. The other missile failed.
The missiles were launched from the USS Ross and the USS Porter in the Mediterranean Sea toward the airfield. Americans believed it had been used by Assad’s forces to carry out an attack on April 4, 2017.
U.S. officials told NBC News at the time that aircraft and infrastructure at the site were hit, including the runway and gas fuel pumps.
Not a soul today is mentioning the terrible war fought between 1980 and 1988, which was fought with our total acquiescence. It's almost an 'exclusive' to mention the conflict at all, so religiously have we forgotten it
Oh, the hypocrisy of it. The ignoble aims. The distraction. The outrageous lies and excuses.
I’m not talking about America’s tweet-from-the-hip president and his desire to escape from the cops’ raid on his lawyer’s office – there’s a Russian connection, all right.
And I’m not talking about his latest sleaze. Life with Melania might not be great at the moment. More distracting to sit with the generals and ex-generals and talk tough about Russia and Syria.
I’m not talking about Theresa May, who wants to step out of the Brexit ditch with any distractions of her own: Salisbury attacks, Douma – even Trump. So Trump telephoned Macron, when the poor lady thought she’d won his hand. What is this nonsense?
Macron has now hitched his own wagon to the Saudis against Iranian “expansionism” – and no doubt arms sales to the Kingdom have something to do with it. But how sad that the desire of young French presidents to act like Napoleon (I can think of a few others) means that they devote themselves to joining in a war, rather than pleading against it.
Now we have our spokespersons and ministers raging about the need to prevent the “normalisation” of chemical warfare, to prevent it becoming a part of ordinary warfare, a return to the terrible days of the First World War.
This does not mean any excuses for the Syrian government – though I suspect, having seen Russia’s Syrian involvement with my own eyes, that Putin might have been getting impatient about ending the war and wanted to eradicate those in the last tunnels of Douma rather than wait through more weeks of fighting. Remember the cruelty of Grozny.
But we all know the problems of proof when it comes to chemicals and gas. Like depleted uranium – which we used to use in our munitions – it doesn’t, like a shell fragment or a bomb casing, leave a tell-tale hunk of metal with an address on it. When all this started with the first gas attack in Damascus, the Russians identified it as gas munitions manufactured in the Soviet Union – but sent to Libya, not to Syria.
But it’s a different war that I’m remembering today. It’s the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. When the Iranians re-crossed their own border and stormed into Iraq years later, Saddam used gas on thousands of Iranian soldiers – and civilians, for there were nurses and doctors at the war front.
Funny how we forget this now. We don’t talk about it. We have forgotten all about it. Talk about the “normalisation” of chemical warfare – this was it!
But in our desire to concentrate minds on Syria, we’re not mentioning the Iran gassings – Iran being another one of our present-day enemies, of course – and this may be because of our lack of official memory.
More likely it’s because of what happened: the institutionalisation of chemical warfare, the use of chemicals by Saddam who was then an ally of the West and of all the Gulf Sunni states, our frontline Sunni hero. The thousands of Iranian soldiers who were to die were referred to on Iraqi radio after they crossed the frontier. The “Persian insects” had crossed the border, it announced. And that’s how they were treated.
For the precursors for the Iraqi gas came largely from the United States – one from New Jersey – and US military personnel later visited the battlefront without making any comments about the chemicals which were sold to the Iraqi regime, of course, for “agricultural” purposes. That’s how to deal with insects, is it not?
Yet not a soul today is mentioning this terrible war, which was fought with our total acquiescence. It’s almost an “exclusive” to mention the conflict at all, so religiously have we forgotten it. That was the real “normalisation”, and we allowed it to happen. Religious indeed, for it was the first great battle of the Sunni-Shia war of our time. But it was real.
Of the thousands of Iranians who were asphyxiated, a few survivors were even sent to British hospitals for treatment. I travelled with others on a military train through the desert to Tehran, the railway compartments packed with unsmiling young men who coughed mucus and blood into white bandages as they read miniature Korans.
They had blisters on their skin and, horrifically, more blisters on top of the first blisters. I wrote a series of articles about this obscenity for The Times, which I then worked for. The Foreign Office later told my editors that my articles were “not helpful”.
No such discretion today. No fear of being out to get Saddam then – because in those days, of course, the good guys were using the chemicals. Don’t we remember the Kurds of Halabja who were gassed by Saddam, with gas which the CIA told its officers to claim was used by the Iranians?
For this war crime, Saddam should have been tried. He was indeed a “gas-killing animal”. But he was hanged for a smaller massacre with conventional weapons – because, I have always suspected, we didn’t want him exposing his gas warfare partners in an open court.
So there we are. May holds a “war cabinet”, for heaven’s sakes, as if our losses were mounting on the Somme in 1916, or Dorniers were flying out of occupied France to blitz London in 1940.
What is this childish prime minister doing? Older, wiser Conservatives will have spotted the juvenile quality of this nonsense, and want a debate in Parliament. How could May follow an American president who the world knows is crackers, insane, chronically unstable, but whose childish messages – about missiles that are “nice and new and ‘smart’” – are even taken seriously by many of my colleagues in the US? We should perhaps be even more worried about what happens if he does turn away from the Iran nuclear deal.
This is a very bad moment in Middle East history – and, as usual, it is the Palestinians who will suffer, their own tragedy utterly forgotten amid this madness. So we are going to “war”, are we? And how do we get out of this war once we have started it? Any plans, anyone? What if there’s a gigantic screw-up, which wars do tend to usually produce? What happens then?
Well, I guess Russia comes to the rescue, just as it did for Obama when gas was used for the first time in the Syrian war.
"It is Congress, not the president, who determines whether our country goes to war and Congress must not abdicate that responsibility," declares Independent senator from Vermont
"President Trump has no legal authority for broadening the war in Syria," Sen. Sanders declared on Wednesday. "It is Congress, not the president, who determines whether our country goes to war and Congress must not abdicate that responsibility." (Photo: BernieSanders.com)
With expectations high that President Donald Trump will order airstrikes or a bombing campaign against Syria at any time, Sen. Bernie Sanders declared Wednesday afternoon that the president has "no legal authority" to directly target the government or military forces of Syria—a sovereign nation.
President Trump has no legal authority for broadening the war in Syria. It is Congress, not the president, who determines whether our country goes to war, and Congress must not abdicate that responsibility. https://t.co/wHnwrXsyxj
"We have been in Afghanistan for 17 years and Iraq for 15 years. The result has been massive regional instability, terrible loss of life, and a cost of trillions of dollars," said Sanders in a statement. "If President Trump believes that expanding the war in Syria will bring stability to the region and protect American interests, he should come to Congress with his ideas."
Far from alone in his assertion, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have also attempted to remind the president, and the American people, that Trump has no authority to unilaterally attack another country—aka start a war. Any military action taken without congressional approval, lawmakers argued, would be an "unconstitutional" violation. (Source: Common Dreams)
The Islamic State has used chemical weapons, including chlorine and sulfur mustard agents, at least 52 times on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq since it swept to power in 2014, according to a new independent analysis.
More than one-third of those chemical attacks have come in and around Mosul, the Islamic State stronghold in northern Iraq, according to the assessment by the IHS Conflict Monitor, a London-based intelligence collection and analysis service.
The IHS conclusions, which are based on local news reports, social media and Islamic State propaganda, mark the broadest compilation of chemical attacks in the conflict. American and Iraqi military officials have expressed growing alarm over the prospect of additional chemical attacks as the allies press to regain both Mosul and Raqqa, the Islamic State capital in Syria.
“The coalition is concerned about ISIL’s use of chemical weapons,” Col. John Dorrian, a military spokesman in Iraq, said in an email on Monday, using another name for the Islamic State. “ISIL has used them in Iraq and Syria in the past, and we expect them to continue employing these types of weapons.”
Colonel Dorrian said that the Islamic State’s ability to use chemical weapons is “rudimentary,” and that American, Iraqi and other allied troops are equipped to deal with the impact of these chemical attacks — typically rockets, mortar shells or artillery shells filled with chemical agents. The effects of these chemical munitions thus far have been limited to the immediate area where they land.
A cemetery on the outskirts of Gaziantep, Turkey. Grave No. 38487 holds the body of a 4-year-old girl who died of wounds she received when a shell containing sulfur mustard agent hit her home in Marea, Syria.CreditBryan Denton for The New York Times
The IHS assessment is to be made public on Tuesday. The New York Times obtained an advance copy of the assessment and the location of the 52 reported chemical attacks. The analysis did not break down the cases by type of chemical attack.
In an effort to blunt the Islamic State’s ability to make the weapons, the American-led air campaign has bombed militants associated with overseeing their production and the facilities where chemical ordnance is manufactured. In September, for instance, allied warplanes attacked a converted pharmaceutical factory in northern Iraq thought to have been a chemical weapons production facility.
As Iraqi forces now advance into Mosul, analysts warned that the Islamic State could unleash more chemical attacks as they cede control. Iraqi forces have reclaimed about one-third of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
“As the Islamic State loses ground around Mosul, there is a high risk of the group using chemical weapons to slow down and demoralize advancing enemy forces.” said Columb Strack, a senior analyst and the head of the IHS Conflict Monitor. “And to potentially make an example of — and take revenge on — civilian dissidents within the city.”
At least 19 of the 52 chemical attacks have taken place in and around Mosul, according to the IHS data, but the assessment noted a decline in attacks before the Iraqi-led offensive against the city.
“Mosul was at the center of the Islamic State’s chemical weapons production,” Mr. Strack said. “But most of the equipment and experts were probably evacuated to Syria in the weeks and months leading up to the Mosul offensive, along with convoys of other senior members and their families.”
The Islamic State is not the only actor in Syria to carry out chemical weapons’ strikes: The Syrian government has conducted many more such attacks.
Syrian military helicopters dropped bombs containing chlorine on civilians in at least two attacks over the past two years, a special joint investigation of the United Nations and an international chemical weapons monitor said in August.
Beginning last year, American officials confirmed the first instances of the Islamic State using sulfur mustard, a chemical warfare agent, and the presence of the mustard gas on fragments of ordnance used in attacks by the group in Syria and Iraq. Laboratory tests, which were also performed on scraps of clothing from victims, showed the presence of a partly degraded form of distilled sulfur mustard, an internationally banned substance that burns a victim’s skin, breathing passages and eyes.
Chemical warfare agents, broadly condemned and banned by most nations under international convention, are indiscriminate. They are also difficult to defend against without specialized equipment, which many of the Islamic State’s foes in Iraq and Syria lack. The chemical agents are worrisome as potential terrorist weapons, even though chlorine and blister agents are typically less lethal than bullets, shrapnel or explosives.
It was unclear how the Islamic State had obtained sulfur mustard, a banned substance with a narrow chemical warfare application. Both the former Hussein government in Iraq and the current government in Syria at one point possessed chemical warfare programs.
Chlorine is commercially available as an industrial chemical and has been used occasionally by bomb makers from Sunni militant groups in Iraq for about a decade. But it is not known how the Islamic State would have obtained sulfur mustard, the officials said.
Abandoned and aging chemical munitions produced by Iraq during its war against Iran in the 1980s were used in roadside bombs against American forces during the occupation that followed the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. But American officials have said the types of ordnance that have been publicly disclosed so far have not matched known chemical ordnance in the former Iraqi inventory.
The attacks have been geographically scattered and have varied in their delivery systems, suggesting that the Islamic State had access to, and was experimenting with, different types of rockets and shells configured to carry chemical warfare agents or toxic industrial chemicals.
One theory is that the militants were manufacturing a crude mustard agent themselves, American officials say. Another theory is that the Islamic State acquired sulfur mustard from undeclared stocks in Syria, either through capture or by purchasing it from corrupt officials, although this theory is not widely held by American analysts.
The US, UK and France have bombed multiple government targets in Syria in an early morning operation targeting alleged chemical weapons sites.
The strikes were in response to a suspected chemical attack on the Syrian town of Douma last week.
Explosions hit the capital, Damascus, as well as two locations near the city of Homs, the Pentagon said.
Russia's ambassador to the US responded by saying the attack on its ally "will not be left without consequences".
"The nations of Britain, France, and the United States of America have marshalled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality," President Trump said in an address to the nation from the White House at about 21:00 local time (02:00 BST).
"The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread, and use of chemical weapons," he said.
The wave of strikes is the most significant attack against President Bashar al-Assad's government by Western powers in seven years of Syria's civil war.
A 'one-time shot'
At a Pentagon briefing shortly after Mr Trump's announcement, Gen Joseph Dunford listed three targets that had been struck:
A scientific research facility in Damascus, allegedly connected to the production of chemical and biological weapons
A chemical weapons storage facility west of Homs
A chemical weapons equipment storage site and an important command post, also near Homs
Syrian state television said government forces had shot down more than a dozen missiles, and claimed only the research facility in Damascus had been damaged.
Three civilians had been injured in Homs, it said.
Reuters news agency cites a pro-Assad militia commander saying other locations were hit, including various sites close to Damascus: a military base in the Dimas area; army depots in the eastern Qalamoun; the Kiswah area, where Iran is believed to have been building a base; and a site in the Qasyoun hills, plus a research centre in Masyaf, further north. These reports are unverified.
US Secretary of Defence James Mattis told journalists there were no reports of US losses in the operation.
In his earlier address, President Trump had said: "We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents."
But Secretary Mattis said that "right now, this is a one-time shot". Gen Dunford confirmed the wave of strikes had ended.
Gen Dunford said the US had specifically identified targets that would "mitigate" the risk of Russian casualties. But the Pentagon said that Russia - which has forces on the ground in Syria in support of the government - had not been given advance notice of the targets.
UK strikes in Homs
UK Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed British involvement, saying there was "no practicable alternative to the use of force".
But she also said the strikes were not about "regime change".
In a further press briefing on Saturday morning, she said that while the assessment of the strike's results is still ongoing, she was confident of its success.
UK strikes carried out by four Tornado jets hit one of the targets mentioned by the Pentagon - a military site near the city of Homs which is believed to have housed precursor materials for chemical weapons, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.
French President Emmanuel Macron also confirmed his country's participation in the operation.
"Dozens of men, women and children were massacred with chemical weapons," he said of the Douma incident a week ago - adding that "the red line had been crossed".
Analysis: Will this time be different?
Jonathan Marcus, BBC defence correspondent
This attack was more significant than the US strike against a Syrian air base a little over a year ago, but at first sight seems more limited than President Trump's rhetoric may have suggested.
Last year some 59 missiles were fired. This time a little over double that number were used.
The strikes are over for now, but there was a clear warning that if the Assad regime resorts to chemical weapons again then further strikes may well follow.
Care was taken, say the Americans, to avoid both Syrian and "foreign" - for that read Russian - casualties.
But the fundamental questions remain. Will President Assad be deterred?
Last year's US strike failed to change his behaviour. This time, will it be any different?
Syria has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons.
The international Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has dispatched a fact-finding mission to the site of the alleged attack in Syria. Investigators were due to start their probe later on Saturday.
Sana, Syria's official state news agency, called the Western action "a flagrant violation of international law".
"The American, French and British aggression against Syria will fail," it said.
The Syrian presidency has tweeted a short video of Bashar al-Assad walking into his office at 09:00 local time with the caption: "Morning of steadfastness".
In his speech, President Trump said Mr Assad had committed "the crimes of a monster".
Double the missiles
A US official told Reuters news agency that Tomahawk cruise missiles were used against multiple locations in Syria.
Secretary Mattis also said the scale of the strikes was about "double" what was launched in April 2017 after a chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 people.
British-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, suggested that more targets than the three listed by the Pentagon had been hit.
It said western forces had struck "scientific research centres, several military bases, and the bases of the Republican Guard and Fourth Division in the capital Damascus and around it."
One Damascus resident told BBC News: "It was mayhem above us."
"I saw more than 20 anti-air missiles launched. They'd fly really high then start weaving across, like they were following their target.
"I didn't see the cruise missiles, but I saw some falling debris nearby."
What has the reaction been?
Reaction to the strikes was mixed among the international community.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he "condemns the attack in the most serious way".
The Nato Secretary General, Jen Stoltenberg, tweeted support for the strikes, saying those who use chemical weapons "must be held accountable".
I support the actions by the US, UK and France against the #Syrian regime's chemical weapons facilities and capabilities. #NATO considers the use of chemical weapons unacceptable. Those responsible must be held accountable. https://t.co/HPQ4YpTT7Y
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also expressed his nation's support.
John Mc Cain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a top Republican who is often critical of the president, applauded Mr Trump for taking military action.
Some Democrats argued that President Trump should come before Congress and receive authorisation for the use of military force.
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned UN members of their responsibilities.
"There's an obligation, particularly when dealing with matters of peace and security, to act consistently with the Charter of the United Nations and with international law in general," he said.
"I urge all Member States to show restraint in these dangerous circumstances."
Analysis: overall aim, apart from sending a message to Assad, was to keep as far away as possible from Russian and Iranian positions
The US-led operation against Syria, which included the contribution of four RAF Tornados, was a relatively limited one, a short, sharp attack against targets alleged to be linked to chemical weapons.
It is intended as a one-off, with no further strikes planned unless Syrian president Bashar al-Assad conducts chemical attacks in the future.
There had been speculation in advance of the attack that there was a risk it could lead to world war three. It was far from that.
But it was much heavier than the strike the US conducted last year unilaterally against a Syrian air base. On that occasion, 20 Syrian planes were destroyed, estimated at 20% of the Syrian air force. The US fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles in that attack: no planes were used, to minimise the risk of American losses.
This weekend the attack involved twice as much weaponry, using planes as well as missiles. That is not a major escalation. Targets were restricted to air bases, research facilities and storage space alleged to have been used in the preparation of chemical attacks.
The main overall aim, apart from sending a message to Assad to desist from chemical weapons attacks, was to keep as far away as possible from Russian and Iranian positions, to avoid widening the conflict by directly drawing in Russia or Iran.
In spite of Russian rhetoric during the week of potential retaliation in the event of the attack, in reality Russia is far short of the military strength it enjoyed as the Soviet Union, with Moscow as anxious as Washington to avoid conflict. In almost every area other than nuclear weapons, Russia is heavily outnumbered in terms of defence spending and equipment compared with the US.
US President Trump arrives to announce military strikes on Syria while delivering a statement from the White House in Washington. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters
The US spends about $550bn annually on defence compared to Russia’s $70bn. To take just one indicator, Russia has one ageing aircraft carrier while the US has 20.
If Russia was to seek to retaliate, it would be through some form of hybrid warfare, a deniable action such as a cyber attack rather than open conflict.
To help avoid conflict, the US warned the Russians in advance that the attack was coming and the air corridors that would be used but not the targets.
The US aim in Syria, as Donald Trump indicated before the Douma attack, is to leave Syria as soon as the US judges Islamic State to have been totally defeated. The attack does not change that. It was not used to attempt regime change. Assad’s presidential palace, exposed on a high hill above Damascus, was left off the target list.
Assad could well be relatively happy with the outcome and the impact on him may be less than the US raid last year.
The US, British and French appear to have escaped unscathed. There was a risk from the relatively sophisticated air defence system that Russia has equipped Syria with. An Israeli plane crashed in February, which the Syrians claimed they had downed. The planes in this latest raid did come under attack from surface to air missiles but all missed their targets.
Another potential risk was that hitting any chemical weapons could result in spreading the poison. But British chemical weapons experts said the risk was minimal and that any chemical weapons would be blown up rather than dispersed.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert who led the UK and Nato chemical weapons response teams, said:“The best way to destroy chemical weapons is to blow them up.”
Another chemical weapons expert, Richard Guthrie, said it depended on the form the material was in and how it is stored. At one extreme, he said, referring to an unpublished study he did on the impact of an attack on a chemical plant in the Balkans, there could have been a substantial loss of life. “At the other extreme, a small stockpile of materials for chemical weapons held in binary form probably wouldn’t cause a huge hazard if bombed,” Guthrie said.
The other risk was of hitting Russian or Iranian military personnel or a miscalculation that led to high civilian casualties Although the US and UK military insist missiles are more precise and intelligence better, mistakes happen. In the 1991 Iraq war the al-Amiriyah bomb shelter in Baghdad was hit killing more than 400 civilians and there was the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999.
To try to avoid Russian or Iranian or civilian casualties, the US, British and French planners opted for targets they believed were far enough away to avoid such an outcome.
The speculation that the world was on the brink of global conflict is likely to prove unfounded. In the end, the raid was only a minor escalation of the one conducted last year.
North Korea appears to have stepped up its covert assistance to a Syrian government agency responsible for producing that country’s chemical weapons and advanced missiles, a U.N. panel has concluded in a confidential report.
The technical aid from Pyongyang, which began more than a decade ago, included three visits by North Korean weapons experts in 2016, as well as 40 previously unknown shipments of specialized materials and equipment used in building chemical manufacturing plants, according to a draft of the report seen by The Washington Post.
The revelations underscore widely held concerns about North Korea’s willingness to market its most advanced weapons technology to foreign clients — including, in this instance, to a Syrian regime notorious for using chemical weapons to kill its citizens. Multiple U.N. investigations have linked President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to mass-casualty attacks on Syrian civilians using sarin, a banned chemical toxin.
“North Korea has a sordid history of supplying rogue states like Syria with weapons of mass destruction technology for cash,” Andrew C. Weber, formerly the top Pentagon official responsible for combating the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, said of the new findings. “Given its large and growing arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missile delivery systems, this is extremely dangerous.”
North Korea’s alleged aid to Syria is detailed in a 70-page report compiled by the U.N. Panel of Experts, a technical body that releases periodical assessments about compliance with U.N. resolutions, including trade sanctions imposed on Pyongyang.
The report, which has not been publicly released yet, describes ongoing efforts by North Korea to circumvent trade restrictions and sell banned military hardware and know-how to dozens of foreign clients, from the Middle East and North Africa to Latin America. Details about North Korea’s alleged shipments to Syria were first reported by the New York Times and Britain’s Express newspaper.
The disclosures come amid revelations that Joseph Yun, the State Department’s point man on North Korea, will leave his post Friday, a departure said to reflect widespread frustration among U.S. diplomats about the Trump administration’s handling of Korea policy.
President Trump has sought to pressure North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, using personal insults and threats of “fire and fury” if the regime continues its march toward developing a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the United States. But on Monday, Trump hinted that the United States might be willing to join South Korea in talks with the North, but only, in his words, “under the right conditions.”
The Panel of Experts has previously accused North Korea of aiding Syria’s chemical weapons program, asserting in an August report that Pyongyang had secretly delivered gas masks and other protective gear to the Assad government. But the latest report suggests that the assistance was much broader and included, for example, materials useful for rebuilding Syria’s damaged chemical weapons facilities.
“We’ve known about this activity for a long time, but the report shows that it’s bigger than we knew,” said a Western diplomat briefed on the panel’s findings who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been released.
Much of the covert aid appears to have been directed toward Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, a government-run agency that employs thousands of scientists and technicians across several campuses in northern and central Syria. U.N. investigators have identified the center as a primary research facility for the country’s chemical weapons and advanced missiles programs. Syria renounced chemical weapons and agreed to the supervised destruction of its declared chemical weapons arsenal in 2013, but the Syrian military has continued to use small amounts of sarin and other toxins in the country’s civil war, apparently from hidden or reconstituted stocks.
Interdicted cargo seen by U.N. investigators in late 2016 and early 2017 included six shipping containers of acid-resistant tiles said to be capable of withstanding high temperatures and corrosive chemicals. Although not specifically banned under international sanctions, the North Korea-supplied tiles “can be used . . . for the interior walls of [a] chemical factory,” the report stated, citing the assessment of an unidentified U.N. member state that provided access to the seized cargo.
A bill of lading listed the shipper as a Chinese company, and the intended recipient as a Syrian firm regarded by Western intelligence agencies as a front company for the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center. China, responding to queries from U.N. investigators, said it was unaware of links between the cargo and blacklisted North Korean companies and individuals.
The report also describes shipments of corrosion-resistant valves and thermometers “known for use in chemical weapons programs,” as well as visits to Syria by three delegations of North Korean technicians in 2016, including two groups of missiles experts.
Syria, in a statement to the U.N. panel, said there are “no DPRK technical companies in Syria,” using a common initialism for North Korea. Officials added that the only North Korean citizens in the country were coaches and athletes “confined in the area of sports.”
Meanwhile, the departure of the State Department’s chief envoy on the Korean crisis delivered a fresh blow to U.S. diplomatic efforts to end the stalemate over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests. The retiring Yun, 63, is the special representative for North Korea policy and deputy assistant secretary for Korea and Japan. He has more than three decades of diplomatic experience.
Yun’s departure will leave another hole in U.S. staffing on Korean issues. Washington has still not nominated an ambassador to South Korea, 13 months into the Trump administration. Victor Cha, an Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, had been in the running for the job, but the administration abruptly scrapped his candidacy last month.
U.S. weighs military response, as president also issues rare criticism of Putin in Sunday tweets
President Donald Trump warned on Sunday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his two biggest allies could pay a “big price” for a suspected chemical-weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians, raising the prospect that the U.S. could launch a punitive military strike against Mr. Assad.
In a series of tweets, Mr. Trump called Mr. Assad an “animal,” criticized Iran for backing the Syrian leader, and took a rare personal shot at Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is vying with the U.S., for power and influence in the Middle East.
“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price…to pay.”
World leaders reacted with disgust to graphic video showing lifeless women and children with foam bubbling from their mouths and noses, suggesting a deadly nerve agent may have been used.
American intelligence analysts and their allies around the world began poring over the videos and sifting through witness reports and other evidence to pinpoint who carried out the attack and what caused such a large number of deaths. The United Nations Security Council planned to hold an emergency meeting on Syria as England and France both denounced the attack as an unconscionable crime.
President Donald Trump reacted strongly to reports of a suspected gas attack in Syria. PHOTO: NICHOLAS KAMM/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Late Sunday, Syria’s pro-government television station reported that one of its bases in Homs had been hit by a missile strike. Syrian media said the military shot down eight missiles and that some soldiers had been killed by those that got through their air defenses.
Pentagon officials said the U.S. had launched no strikes against Syria. Speculation turned to Israel, which has carried out scores of airstrikes in Syria without confirming or denying involvement. It didn’t appear that the reported strike was part of any U.S.-led response to the suspected chemical-weapons attack.
The Israeli army declined to comment early Monday. Israeli officials had earlier reacted negatively to the attack in Syria.
Mr. Trump discussed Syria on Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron and the two leaders agreed to “coordinate a strong, joint response,” the White House said.
The U.S. response is expected to be a central topic of discussion in Washington on Monday, when Mr. Trump plans to meet with his cabinet before gathering his senior military leaders for a briefing and dinner where Syria is likely to be a top issue.
Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price...
Medical professionals and human-rights groups said it appeared the Assad regime had used a mix of chlorine and some kind of nerve agent, though some said it wasn’t clear what chemicals may have been used.
“Based on the available information and the clinical symptoms and signs, we highly suspect it was a mixed attack of chlorine and a sarin-like chemical agent,” a doctor with the Syrian American Medical Society said.
The U.S. won’t decide how to respond until those questions are answered, which could take a few days, one person familiar with the matter said. If America and its allies conclude that Mr. Assad did use nerve gas in the attack, Mr. Trump would have to decide whether to respond with force, as he did a year ago, when he ordered a cruise-missile strike on a Syrian airfield used by pilots who dropped sarin gas on Syrian civilians, killing at least 85 people.
The Assad regime has been accused of using chemical weapons repeatedly during the war, charges it has denied.
The weekend attack is fueling a discussion in Washington over what role the U.S. should play in Syria, where more than 2,000 American troops are working to eliminate the last pockets of Islamic State fighters.
The attack came days after Mr. Trump publicly announced his hopes of quickly pulling U.S, forces out of Syria, a move some worry will allow Russia and Iran to eclipse America as key power brokers in the Middle East.
The president’s national-security team has been nearly united in pushing Mr. Trump to keep forces in Syria to ensure Islamic State is eliminated as a serious threat. Key members of the team want to see the U.S. retain its presence in Syria to ensure Iran doesn’t pose an increasing danger to neighboring Israel. But Mr. Trump pressed the military to get out of Syria in six months.
On Sunday, top Republicans said Mr. Trump’s push for withdrawal appeared to have given Mr. Assad the impression that he could again use chemical weapons without fear of a U.S. response.
“It’s a defining moment in his presidency,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said on ABC in calling on Mr. Trump to destroy Mr. Assad’s air force and resume covert U.S. efforts to push the Syrian leader from power.
“They see our determination to stay in Syria waning, and it’s no accident that they used chemical weapons,” he said. “If it becomes a tweet without meaning, then he’s hurt himself with North Korea. If he doesn’t follow through and live up to that tweet, he’s going to look weak in the eyes of Russia and Iran.”
Mr. Trump faced a similar test last April, when the U.S. military launched nearly 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield in an effort to deter Mr. Assad from using chemical weapons. The strike appeared to curb Mr. Assad’s use of some chemical weapons, though he continued to use less-lethal chlorine gas against civilians.
For months, the Trump administration has warned Mr. Assad that the use of chemical weapons could trigger a military response. Even before Sunday’s attack, the U.S. military crafted a series of options for the president, U.S. officials said.
While U.S. officials declined to discuss the options previously prepared for the president, outside analysts said the military could use cruise missiles to strike the Syrian military unit directly responsible for Saturday’s bombing in a limited attempt to again deter Mr. Assad from using chemical weapons.
Mr. Trump could order a broader strike meant to cripple Mr. Assad’s air force, though the Russian military carries out airstrikes for the Syrian regime and the U.S. is unlikely to target Russian planes. The U.S. could also carry out a broader strike aimed at the Syrian leadership by hitting military headquarters used to oversee the fighting.
A key issue in whether to launch a military strike is what it is meant to accomplish. The U.S. made it clear last year that it wasn’t using the cruise-missile strike to try and topple the Syrian leader. The U.S. is focusing most of its efforts on stagnant peace talks the Trump administration hopes would lead to Mr. Assad stepping aside.
A new military strike could also increase tensions with Russia, which warned the U.S. against attacking Syria and denounced reports about the suspected chemical weapons attack as a “hoax.”
Analysts said it seemed unlikely Mr. Trump would target Russian forces based in Syria, a move that would ignite a dangerous conflict with Moscow.
Mr. Trump will also have to consider what impact his response would have on other rivals like North Korea, which might view a decision not to strike Mr. Assad as another sign the U.S. is pulling back from conflicts around the world. America’s regional allies, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, have been pressing the U.S. to retain its place as a counterbalance to Russia and Iran in the Middle East.
Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) dismissed suggestions that Mr. Trump’s public talk about getting out of Syria emboldened Mr. Assad, but said Sunday’s attack was one sign that the U.S. shouldn’t leave Syria too quickly.
“I think the president is going to have to reconsider his plan for an early withdrawal in light of what has happened,” she said on CNN.
Several people have died or were injured after a military airport in Syria came under missile attack, the country's state media reported.
State news agency SANA said several missiles struck the Tayfur airbase, also known as T4, near the city of Homs in the early hours of Monday.
Details are still emerging and it is not clear who is responsible.
It follows international alarm over a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Douma.
US president Donald Trump branded Syria's President Assad an "animal" on Sunday, warning that he, along with allies Iran and Russia, had a "big price to pay".
Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price...
Mr Trump and France's President Emmanuel Macron issued a joint statement the same day vowing to "coordinate a strong, joint response" to the alleged attack.
But US officials have denied launching a missile attack.
"At this time, the Department of Defense is not conducting air strikes in Syria," the Pentagon said in a statement.
"However, we continue to closely watch the situation and support the ongoing diplomatic efforts to hold those who use chemical weapons, in Syria and otherwise, accountable."
Syria's state news agency initially called the reported missile strike on the Tayfur airfield a "suspected US attack," but later dropped the reference to the US.
In April 2017, the US fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria's Shayrat military airfield in response to a chemical weapons attack on a different rebel-held town, Khan Sheikhoun.
Israel also carried out major strikes on Syrian targets earlier this year. The Israeli military has not yet commented on the Tayfur attack.
What happened in Douma?
Medical sources say dozens of people were killed on Saturday in the attack on Douma, in the Eastern Ghouta region.
One video, recorded by rescue workers known as the White Helmets, shows a number of men, women and children lying lifeless inside a house, many with foam at their mouths.
However, it has not been possible to verify independently what actually happened, or the actual number of dead.
The UN Security Council is expected to discuss the crisis on Monday.
Both Syria and Russia deny a chemical attack took place, and have reached an evacuation deal with the Jaish al-Islam rebels who hold Douma.
Moscow said military operations there had been halted. Under the deal, 100 buses are said to be moving 8,000 fighters and 40,000 of their relatives out of the battered town. Hostages who had been held by the rebels are being set free.
The development means pro-government forces have now taken full control of Eastern Ghouta.
Analysts say this is President Assad's biggest military success since the fall of Aleppo in 2016. It follows a weeks-long government offensive in which more than 1,600 people were killed.
Syrian doctors and rescue workers said Sunday that dozens of people had died in an apparent chemical attack on a besieged enclave near Damascus as government forces escalated their offensive to recapture the last rebel strongholds near the capital.
The attack, which killed at least 40 people in the city of Douma on Saturday night, many of them choking and foaming at the mouth, appeared to force the start of a final withdrawal of hard-line rebels from the most strategically important district to remain under opposition control. An agreement allowing them to pull out was announced by the Russian military command in Syria.
More than 500 people “were brought to local medical centers with symptoms indicative of exposure to a chemical agent,” according to the Syrian American Medical Society, a Washington-based nonprofit group that supports health facilities in the area. Footage from the area showed bodies strewn across the floor of an air raid shelter. Among them was a young man who appeared to have died foaming at the mouth and clutching his child.
Rescue workers at the scene said the smell of chlorine in the room had been almost overpowering.
President Trump responded to the attack on his Twitter account Sunday, describing it as an “atrocity.”
“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria,” he said. “Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price . . .”
“Animal Assad” was an insult directed at Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The attack came as Syrian government forces stepped up an eight-week-long offensive against Douma, outside Damascus, the last stronghold controlled by hard-line rebels from the Jaish al-Islam group.
More than six years into Syria’s bitter civil war, Assad’s military has repeatedly been accused of using chemical weapons in densely populated areas, a tactic that experts say is intended to sow terror and break morale.
As rescue workers counted the dead Sunday, pro-government outlets reported that a deal had finally been reached for the rebels to leave the area. That was confirmed by Russian Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko, who said that 8,000 fighters would be allowed to pull out, according to the Russian news agency Tass. Jaish al-Islam did not respond to requests for comment.
Syrian state media and Russia’s Foreign Ministry dismissed claims that Syrian troops were responsible for the deaths in Douma. Russia is a principal ally of Assad.
The allegations are “without basis” and are “designed to shield the terrorists . . . who reject a political settlement,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. But a network of flight monitors said they had observed a stream of Mi-8 helicopters departing a Syrian government air base and heading toward Douma between 8:25 and 8:45 p.m., shortly before doctors started to record mass casualties.
Escalating U.S. rhetoric against Syrian and Russian tactics in Eastern Ghouta has done little to quell the violence. Late Saturday, the State Department singled out both governments, saying they “must be held accountable.”
Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert described the reports from Eastern Douma as “disturbing” and “horrifying,” saying they required an “immediate response by the international community.”
Gregory D. Koblentz, the director of George Mason University’s Biodefense Graduate Program, said the attack appeared to reflect how much the clout of U.S. policy has faded in Syria.
“Assad is less concerned about Beltway politics, less concerned by who is in the White House. His calculation is based on whether it will help his chances in achieving gains on the ground, or punishing the rebels,” he said.
Multiple reports, including from rescue workers and the State Department, said an initial attack had targeted a hospital. It was unclear, however, what type of chemicals might have been used.
A representative for the United Nations said that Secretary General António Guterres was “particularly alarmed by allegations that chemical weapons have been used against civilian populations in Douma” but that the United Nations was “not in a position to verify these reports.”
Syrian doctors and rescue workers on Sunday shared with journalists graphic images of men, women and children who they said had been killed or wounded in the attack.
“We tried to send people to the area to rescue the injured, but even the rescue workers began suffocating,” said Mohamed Samer, a medical worker in Douma.
Some of the footage showed piles of bodies inside homes or slumped in concrete stairwells, foam visible on their noses and mouths. In other videos, civilians are shown streaming onto a chaotic field clinic where workers were attempting to treat those affected. In one, doctors held an inhaler to the mouth of an infant whose body shuddered through ragged breaths. Another showed an ashen-faced man convulsing.
The images recalled earlier chemical weapons attacks on civilians in Syria, including those involving the nerve agent sarin. A year ago, nearly 100 people were killed in a strike on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun that the United Nations has blamed on the Syrian air force. In 2013, also in Eastern Ghouta, a sarin attack killed more than 1,000 people — an event that prompted President Barack Obama to threaten military action against the Syrian government.
More than 1,700 people have been killed in Eastern Ghouta, of which Douma is the largest city, since the Syrian army and allied Russian forces began a punishing assault in February to rout rebels from the area.
A U.N. Security Council resolution failed to quell the fighting, and over the past month, more than 130,000 Syrians have left Eastern Ghouta as part of evacuation deals between rebels and government forces, the United Nations said.
As many as 150,000 people remain in Douma, where the humanitarian situation is “severe” and food is “in short supply,” according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
A fragile cease-fire had shielded Douma’s residents for 10 days as Russia led talks with Jaish al-Islam to negotiate its withdrawal from the area after six years of control. But that respite was shattered Friday when government forces began a fresh round of air and artillery strikes after the rebel group showed little willingness to compromise.
Jaish al-Islam launched volleys of rockets into densely populated Damascus districts as the fighting intensified, killing or maiming residents and striking terror in the broader community.
“I am living the toughest moments of my life,” said one medical worker in Douma, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons. He said the bombardment has been so intense in recent days that he has been unable to reach his family in Douma.
“Everyone is too scared to go out,” he said.
A victory for government forces in Douma would effectively mark a death blow to the armed rebellion against Assad, whose government has wielded brutal force to snuff out a seven-year-long uprising.
Eastern Ghouta was one of the first areas near Damascus to revolt in 2011. If it falls under full government control, only a handful of areas will remain under rebel control, none of them as strategically important.
The Battle of Aleppo which began on July 19, 2012 is part of the ongoing Syrian Civil War. It is a major military confrontation between the Syrian opposition – Free Syrian Army and Sunni Fighters including Levant Front – in partial cooperation with the Army of Conquest – it includes Jabhat Fateh al-Sham – against the Syrian Armed Forces of the Syrian government, supported by Hezbollah, Shiite militias and Russia.
The stalemate which was in place for four years ended in July 2016 when the Syrian government troops closed the rebels’ only supply line into Aleppo. This angered the rebel forces and they launched unsuccessful counteroffensives in September and October.
In November, government forces embarked on a decisive campaign that resulted in the recapture of most of Aleppo by December 2016. The Syrian government victory was widely seen as a "turning point" in Syria's civil war, while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hailed it as "historic".
Combatants named it the "mother of battles" or "Syria's Stalingrad” due to the large scale devastation of the battle.
Following the re-capture of most of Aleppo by the Syrian government in December, the UN received reports that pro-government forces have been carrying out massacres of civilians in Eastern Aleppo. At least 82 civilians, including children, have been killed, that have been described as 'war crimes'. Syrian troops discovered several prisons in East Aleppo used by the opposition to detain, torture and in some cases murder their opponents, including civilians that refused to fight.
The battle caused catastrophic destruction to the Old City of Aleppo, a UNESCO World Heritage site. After four brutal years of fighting, the battle represents one of the longest sieges in modern warfare and one of the bloodiest battles of the Syrian Civil War, which left an estimated 31,000 people dead, almost a tenth of the overall war casualties, which is estimated to be at least 400,000.
Here’s a collection of pics which shows the Before and After scene in Aleppo:
