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US launches 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles
Trump launches military strike against Syria
Story highlights
- Trump condemned the chemical attacks earlier this week
- "I think what Assad did is terrible," he said earlier Thursday
(CNN)The
United States launched a military strike Thursday on a Syrian
government target in retaliation for their chemical weapons attack on
civilians earlier in the week.
On
President Donald Trump's orders, US warships launched between 50-60
Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government airbase where the
warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, US officials
said.
"Tonight, I ordered a
targeted military strike on the air field in Syria from where the
chemical attack was launched," Trump said during short remarks to
reporters at Mar-a-Lago. "It is in this vital national security of the
United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical
weapons."
He
added: "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical
weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention
and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Years of previous
attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very
dramatically."
A
US defense official said the strike was targeted on runway, aircraft
and fuel points. The missiles were launched from warships in the Eastern
Mediterranean.
Strikes are over "until another decision is made," the official said.
The
strikes are the first direct military action the US has taken against
the leadership of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's
six-year civil war and represent a substantial escalation of the US'
military campaign in the region, which could be interpreted by the
Syrian government as an act of war.
Trump
was very affected by the images of dead children among the civilian
casualties in the Syrian chemical weapons attack and felt compelled to
act, a senior administration official said.
The
US began launching airstrikes in Syria in September 2014 under
President Barack Obama as part of its coalition campaign against ISIS,
but has only targeted the terrorist group and not Syrian government
forces.
Trump met with his national
security team before his dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping in
Mar-a-Lago Thursday, where he made the decision to pull the trigger on
the biggest military action of his presidency, an administration
official says.
He sat through dinner with the President Xi as action was under way.
Defense
Secretary James Mattis has been updating Trump about the missile
strikes in Syria following his dinner with Xi, according to a US
official.
Mattis, Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson and Trump's national security adviser Gen. H.R.
McMaster were with Trump at Mar-a-Lago at the time. Vice President Mike
Pence remained in Washington, where he returned to the White House after
dinner.
Trump's order to strike
the Syrian government targets came a day after he said the chemical
attacks -- whose grisly effects were broadcast worldwide where videos
captured in the immediate aftermath -- "crossed a lot of lines for me"
and said he felt a "responsibility" to respond.
"I will tell you it's already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much," Trump said.
"When
you kill innocent children -- innocent babies -- babies -- little
babies with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to
hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line,
many, many lines," Trump said.
Trump's
decision to launch the strikes, the most significant military action of
his young presidency, came nearly four years after the US first
concluded that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons in Syria. The
Obama administration concluded that Syria had violated the "red line"
Obama had set a year earlier in discussing the use of chemical weapons,
but ultimately decided against military action against Syria in favor of
a Russian-brokered deal to extricate the country's chemical weapons
stockpile.
Trump at the time said
the US should "stay the hell out of Syria" and urged Obama on Twitter to
"not attack Syria" in the wake of the 2013 chemical attack.
"There
is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your 'powder' for another
(and more important) day," he tweeted in September 2013.
Trump
repeatedly criticized Obama during his presidential campaign for not
acting on his "red line" threat, but the real estate mogul also argued
against deepening the US' military involvement in Syria, particularly as
it related to Assad.
Trump argued
last May in a TV interview that he would "go after ISIS big league," but
said he did not support targeting Assad's regime, arguing the US has
"bigger problems than Assad."
Syria's
six-year civil war has claimed the lives of at least 400,000, according
to a United Nations estimate released a year ago. More than 5 million
Syrians have fled the country and more than 6 million more have been
displaced internally, according to UN agencies.
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