U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross fires a Tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea which U.S. Defense Department said was a part of cruise missile strike against Syria on April 7, 2017. Robert S. Price/Courtesy U.S. Navy/Handout via REUTERS.
By: Tyler Hehn
Shayrat Air Base in Syria was hit by roughly two-dozen American Tomahawk missiles late Thursday night.
This air attack from President Donald Trump was in response to a chemical attack that injured close to 550 people in the town of Khan Sheikhoun two days earlier.
Shayrat Airfield in Homs, Syria, in this DigitalGlobe satellite image was released by the U.S. Defense Department on April 6, 2017, after announcing U.S. forces launched a cruise missile strike against the airfield. DigitalGlobe/Courtesy U.S. Department of Defense/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump addressed the bombing in remarks from Mar-a-Lago, Florida, his “Winter White House”, saying the U.S. will not stand for attacks against innocent civilians like the one in Syria.
“Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror,” he said.
While there is much debate about who delivered the nerve agent, Trump addressed the Syrian president directly.
“Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children,” Trump said. “It was a slow and brutal death for many.”
A Russian statement from President Putin says their relationship with U.S. was already on unsteady ground before the missile attacks.
“The President of Russia regards the U.S. airstrikes on Syria as an act of aggression against a sovereign state delivered in violation of international law under a far-fetched pretext. The Syrian Army has no chemical weapons,” read the Kremlin statement. “The fact of the destruction of all Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles has been recorded and verified by the OPCW, a specialized UN body.”
The chemical weaponry in this statement refers to stockpiles of chemical weaponry that was ordered to be destroyed.
It’s the not first time chemical weapons were used in Syria’s civil war. Residential areas were the target of chlorine bombings a handful of times in 2014 and 2015.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement Canada fully supports the United States in its effort to stop any more attacks on innocent civilians.
“President Assad’s use of chemical weapons and the crimes the Syrian regime has committed against its own people cannot be ignored. These gruesome attacks cannot be permitted to continue with impunity,” Trudeau said in the statement.
Countries have publicly stated whether or not they support the attack by the United States.
President Assad issued a statement via Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) referring to the attacked site as al-Shayrat, an airport in Homs and not as an air base, and that the attack damaged several homes killing seven citizens, including four children.
“Targeting an airport of a sovereign state by the U.S. is an outrageous act that clarifies in conclusive evidence once again what Syria has been saying that the succession of administrations of this regime does not change the deep policies of its entity which is represented by targeting states, subjugating peoples and the attempt to dominate the world,” Assad’s statement read.
An Iranian statement from the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) identifies no positive in the actions of President Trump. Foreign Ministry spokesman for Iran, Bahram Qasemi, also denied involvement in the chemical attacks on Tuesday.
“Tehran considers this excuse for unilateral action as dangerous, destructive and [a] violation of fundamental principles of international law,” Qasemi’s statement read.