Syria strikes: Site of chemical attack hit again
At least one woman was killed and three other people were injured in Saturday's strikes in Khan Sheikhoun, two activists in the town said. The strike that killed the woman happened in a residential neighborhood, activist Alaa Al-Youssef said.
It wasn't clear from where the strikes were launched, but the Syrian air force resumed flight operations at the base the United States struck Friday, two pro-regime media outlets and an opposition group said Saturday.
A video on Instagram, posted Saturday by a reporter from the state-run Russia-24 outlet, purported to show a jet rolling down a tarmac at the air base. The caption reads: "Return to work at Shayrat."
A US defense official said Friday's strikes were not intended to damage runways or fully disable the base. Instead, the strikes hit aircraft, fuel storage, weapons dumps and other equipment, aiming to send a message to the Syrian regime that any use of chemical weapons would not be tolerated, the official said.
In the aftermath of the US strike, Russia pledged to help strengthen Syria's air defenses. Russian state media reported that a frigate, the Admiral Grigorovich, would call at a logistics base at Tartus, Syria. It had earlier picked up supplies at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
The Russian frigate, the Admiral Grigorovich. The ship, which is armed with cruise missiles, was reportedly entering the Mediterranean en route to a logistics site in Syria, Russian state media said.
NATO called it one of the largest deployments from Russia in decades.
Retired US Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a CNN military analyst, said the frigate appeared to be a show of force by Russia, which since late 2015 has been conducting airstrikes in Syria against forces opposing the Syrian regime.
"I think the Russians were caught off guard (by the US strikes)," Hertling said. "So they want to make sure they're tracking those (US) ships."
An airstrike killed 15 civilians, including four children, in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said. The monitoring group said the strike on the village of Urum al-Joz was suspected to have been carried out by Russian planes, which operate in support of the Syrian government.
A US-led coalition also has long been conducting airstrikes in Syria, against ISIS targets in the country. On Saturday, a suspected coalition strike killed at least 15 civilians in north-central Syria near Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIS, a local activist group and the state-run SANA news outlet said.
US quiet on next steps
US President Donald Trump said he ordered the Tomahawk missile strike on the Shayrat base because the United States believed aircraft that carried out Tuesday's chemical attack were launched from there.
Trump praised his military for Friday's missile strike. "Congratulations to our great military men and women for representing the United States, and the world, so well in the Syria attack," Trump posted Saturday to Twitter.
The White House late Friday refused to say whether its strike on Shayrat air base was a one-off action or part of a new strategy designed to hobble the military capabilities of President Bashar al-Assad. Nor would it say whether the United States believed Assad should step down after the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun that killed at least 80 people and injured dozens more on Tuesday.
A satellite photo of the Shayrat air base after the US missile strikes.
The White House refused to discuss next steps. Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump would not "telegraph his next move." Speaking to reporters at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Spicer said the US missile attack was "very decisive, justified and proportional."
He declined to say whether Trump now believed Assad should relinquish power. "First and foremost the President believes that the Syrian government [and the] Assad regime should abide by the agreement they made not to use chemical weapons," Spicer said.
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