By Theodore Shoebat
Donald Trump ordered an airstrike on Syria, and dozens of missiles just struck a Syrian base. I did a whole video on this:
According to one report:
U.S President Donald Trump said on Thursday he ordered a targeted military strike against an airfield in Syria from which a deadly chemical attack was launched this week.
U.S. officials said the military launched dozens of cruise missile strikes against an airbase controlled by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s forces in response to the chemical attack on Tuesday in a rebel-held area.
Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct U.S. action yet in Syria’s six-year-old civil war, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran, Assad’s two main military backers.
Some 50 Tomahawk missiles were launched from U.S. Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea, striking multiple targets – including the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations – on an airbase in Homs, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Further details and damage estimates from the strikes, which were conducted at 8:45 p.m. EDT (0045 GMT Friday), were not immediately known.
Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week’s chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack.
Trump appeared to have opted for measured and targeted air attacks instead of a full-blown assault on Assad’s forces and installations.
Trump, who was attending a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort, said earlier on Thursday that “something should happen” with Assad but did not specifically call for his ouster.
Officials from the Pentagon and State Department met all day to discuss plans for the missile strikes.
U.S. military action put the new president at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assad’s side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups.
Trump has until now focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where U.S. special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups.
The risks have grown worse since 2013, when Barack Obama, Trump’s predecessor, considered and then rejected ordering a cruise missile strike in response to the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s loyalists.