MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the airfield late Thursday. US President Donald Trump said the attack was a response to the alleged chemical weapon use in Idlib on Tuesday, which Washington blames on Damascus.
Russia described the attack as an aggression against a sovereign state.
"The office of the Syrian president emphasizes that the US actions are frivolous, irresponsible and shortsighted," the presidency said in a statement. "They were naively dragged into this because of a lying propaganda campaign."
It noted that the late Thursday attack "clearly explains once again that the change of administrations in this regime does not change its policy."
"If the US regime thought that this attack could support its allies from terrorist groups on the ground, then Syria affirms that this attack only strengthened the republic's determination to fight terrorists," the presidency stressed.
On Tuesday, the Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces reported that some 80 people were killed and 200 injured in a chemical weapon attack in Idlib, blaming the Syrian army for the incident. The Syrian Armed Forces refuted the allegations, with a source in the Syrian army telling Sputnik that the army did not have chemical weapons.
After a 2013 chemical weapon attack in eastern Ghouta, Syria, which killed up to 1,500 people, Syria joined the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The country's decision to join the convention came as result of a US-Russian agreement on the elimination of chemical weapons in Syria under OPCW control. In January 2016, the OPCW announced its completion of the chemical weapons disarmament in Syria.
However, in June 2016, the US State Department published a report which said Syria had continued to use chemical substances against citizens and suggested the country could also stockpile chemical weapons. After the report was released, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Kim Won-soo said that UN and OPCW experts still could not confirm the complete destruction of chemical weapon production facilities in Syria.
