Afrasianet - The US fired almost 60 cruise missiles at an airfield of the Syrian army, claiming that it was used to conduct a chemical weapons attack at a rebel-held town in the province of Idlib on Tuesday.
• 07 April 2017
03:55 GMT
Bolivia has requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting to be held behind closed doors on Friday to discuss the US missile attack against Syria, a senior Security Council diplomat told Reuters.
• 03:53 GMT
• 03:49 GMT
• 03:48 GMT
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Washington did not contact the Russian leadership or “any other level within Russian infrastructure” before conducting the airstrike on the Syrian base.
“No contacts were made with Moscow, with President Putin,” Tillerson told reporters at Mar-a-Lago.
• 03:47 GMT
• 03:37 GMT
The governor of Homs province said the American strike against the Syrian army installation was helping terrorist forces.
“The Syrian leadership and Syrian policy will not change,” Talal Barazi said in a phone interview with state television, as cited by Reuters. “This targeting was not the first and I don't believe it will be the last.”
He also said firefighting and rescue operations were underway at the Shayrat airfield.
• 03:30 GMT
The American attack against Syria came a day after its UN envoy, Nikki Haley, threatened unilateral action against Damascus unless the UN Security Council acted collectively on the alleged attack. The US and its allies Britain and France wanted the UNSC to pass a resolution blaming the Syrian government for the incident. Russia opposed it, saying a proper investigation was necessary before blame could be assigned in the case.
• 03:25 GMT
Tillerson added that the US had a high degree of confidence that sarin gas was used in the alleged chemical attack. He didn’t offer an explanation of why the people responding to the incident were apparently not affected by sarin despite not wearing any protection gear, as footage released by the activists suggests.
• 03:24 GMT
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Russia of failing to carry out the 2013 agreement to secure Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, claiming that Moscow was either incompetent or complicit. The mandate to remove and destroy the weapons was never laid on Moscow. The Organization for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW) did the job and has been verifying that Damascus kept its part of the bargain jointly with the UN.
• 03:22 GMT
Conflicting reports came from Syria on whether the US missiles caused loss of life on the ground, with some reports saying they did and others saying they didn’t. The Syrian state TV called the attack “American aggression”.