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| U.S. Launches Military Strikes Against Syria | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 6 2017, 09:41 PM (211 Views) | |
| Webster | Apr 6 2017, 09:41 PM Post #1 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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.....reports coming in of U.S. military strikes against Syrian targets over the past hour in response to Tuesday's horrific gas attack in northern Syria..... (The Guardian) News is breaking that the US has launched missile strikes against Syria. NBC News reports that strikes were launched on al-Shayrat airfield, a Syrian military site close to Homs. Reports from NBC and CNN say more than 50 Tomahawk missiles were fired. This follows an apparent change of heart by Donald Trump over action in Syria, sparked by Tuesday’s chemical weapons attack in Idlib that killed more than 70 people. We will be following developments here on the live blog as they unfold. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 12:17 AM Post #46 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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![]() Daily Telegraph) In this image released by the US Navy, the USS Ross fires a tomahawk land attack missile April 7, 2017, at a Syrian air force airfield |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 12:18 AM Post #47 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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![]() (BBC News) Strikes caused 'several deaths' at airbase - local governor --Several people died at the airbase targeted by the US, Al Shayrat, the governor of Homs province where the base is located told AFP. "There are martyrs, but we don't yet know the number either of martyrs or of wounded," Talal Barazi said. Mr Barazi said that Syrian forces operating out of the base were targeting the so-called Islamic State. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 12:25 AM Post #48 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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![]() (BBC News) Pentagon says it tracked jets involved in chemical attack --The Pentagon said it tracked the jets involved in the chemical strike on Khan Shaykhoun after identifying the crater left at the site. Officials released a map of the reported journey made by the jets. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 12:26 AM Post #49 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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--Vice President Mike Pence remains in the West Wing right now after returning to the White House around 7p. Spox says he's here for meetings. (Dan Merica, CNN - 6 April 2017) |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 12:32 AM Post #50 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the Russians were informed in “multiple conversations” on Thursday, through the “deconfliction channel” – a communications channel to the Russian base at Latakia used to avoid collisions or exchanges of fire between US and allied planes and Russian planes. “There are Russians at the base and we took extraordinary precautions to not target the area where the Russians are,” he said. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 12:35 AM Post #51 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(Daily Telegraph) Homs governor: Shayrat air base was being used in fight against Islamic State --Homs Governor Talal Barazi has said the targeted air base had been providing air support for army operations against Islamic State east of Palmyra. "I believe - God willing - that the human casualties are not big, but there is material damage. We hope there are not many victims and martyrs," he told Reuters by telephone. Speaking at dawn, he said rescue and fire-fighting operations had been going on for two hours at the base. He said the attack was a form of "support for the armed terrorist groups, and it is an attempt to weaken the capabilities of the Syrian Arab Army to combat terrorism". Speaking to Syrian state TV, Barazi said: "The Syrian leadership and Syrian policy will not change. "This targeting was not the first and I don't believe it will be the last," he added. In separate comments to al-Mayadeen, a Lebanese TV station, he said: "The war against terrorism will continue." |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 12:37 AM Post #52 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) Homs governor: deaths reported at airbase --Associated Press cites Talal Barazi, governor of Homs province, where al-Shayrat airbase is located, saying there have been deaths as a result of the strikes. At the moment, there are no further details. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 12:49 AM Post #53 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) The Guardian’s Middle East correspondent reports from Beirut: The al-Shayrat air base has been central to the Syrian war and to persistent claims of chemical weapons use. It is one of Bashar al-Assad’s main military institutions and has housed allies including Russian troops, Hezbollah and Iraqi militias throughout the war. Sources in Lebanon who are allied to the regime said senior officers evacuated the base before the airstrikes happened and some commanders were attempting to move their families to the Lebanese capital. The US strike had been increasingly anticipated from late on Thursday until early Friday morning, when 59 precision guided missiles were launched from two US destroyers in the Mediterranean. Russia has retained a presence at al-Shayrat, although its most significant force is located at a purpose-built base close to Latakia. There was no immediate response from Hezbollah, whose forces have been central to turning the tide of the war in Assad’s favour over the past two years, most recently in Hama, where they have helped rebuff an assault near Syria’s fourth city led by jihadists and opposition groups. Russia has established a comprehensive ground-radar bubble over much of northern Syria, which would have been capable of detecting incoming threats, such as the pre-dawn barrage of missiles. Before the war, al-Shayrat was one of Assad’s strategic bases. Located near where large stores of sarin were kept in bunkers, it has maintained that role even as most of the stockpiles were surrendered in late 2013. Since then, there have been several claims of sarin use and extensive claims that chlorine has been strapped to war planes and helicopters and dropped on opposition fighters and communities. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 12:59 AM Post #54 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) Russia is waking up to news of the strike – though we know military channels were used to alert Moscow before the missiles were launched – and reaction so far has been hostile. State news agency RIA quoted Viktor Ozerov, head of the defence and security committee at the Russian upper house of parliament, saying the US strikes could undermine the fight against terrorism. Ozerov said Russia would call for an urgent meeting of the UN security council: This [the attack] could be viewed as an act of aggression of the US against a UN nation. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 01:15 AM Post #55 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) A mainstay of US warfare for more than 20 years, the Tomahawk cruise missile had been considered the most likely weapon for any strike by the Trump administration against the Syrian military. And so it proved. The US launched its surprise attack on an inland airbase near Homs early on Thursday morning, with 59 of the missiles deployed from two naval destroyers. USS Ross and USS Porter were in the eastern Mediterranean sea off Syria’s western coast. More than 6.25m long (20ft) and weighing 1,590kg (3,500lb), the Tomahawk land-attack missile is billed by the US navy as “an all-weather, long range, subsonic cruise missile” able to be launched from either ships or submarines. They commonly carry warheads of up to 454kg (1,000lb), and are designed to fly at low altitudes towards even heavily defended land targets with extreme accuracy. Their chief advantage in warfare is that they are unmanned, guided by GPS to targets more than 1,600km (1,000 miles) away at high subsonic speeds of 885km/h (550mph). -Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/07/tomahawk-missile-weapon-of-deadly-precision-comes-back-to-fore-in-syria |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 01:16 AM Post #56 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organisation that monitors the war, says al-Shayrat airbase has been almost completely destroyed. There are reports that some troops have been killed, but this is as yet unconfirmed. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 01:21 AM Post #57 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) Australia 'strongly supports' US strike --Australia’s prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said he “strongly supports” the US military strike on Syria’s al-Shayrat airfield, calling it a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response to the Syrian regime’s “shocking war crime”. He said Australia was in close discussions with its allies about the next steps, but said the airstrike had sent an important signal that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. In a specially-convened press conference in Sydney on Friday, Turnbull said: It sends a strong message to the Assad regime. The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift. We support the United States in that swift action. Turnbull said it was important to note that the international community was not at war with the Assad regime, and the US had made it clear it was not seeking to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. However, he said events of this week raised “very real questions” over whether Assad could remain as leader of Syria: This chemical attack was a horrific crime, shocking, even in the context of that brutal war. Turnbull said the US had not asked for more military support, but he left open the possibility of providing it in the future: There is no question that this shocking conflict in Syria is crying out itself for a resolution and we certainly will continue to work with our allies and our partners to see a resolution to this shocking war. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 01:27 AM Post #58 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) UK: strike was 'appropriate response' --Britain, too, has issued a show of support for the US action against Syria. A Downing Street spokeswoman said: The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 01:29 AM Post #59 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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![]() --McMaster gave an unusually candid account of how WH decided on strikes. "There were 3 options, [POTUS] asked us to focus on 2 in particular" (Christina Wilkie, Huffington Post - 7 April 2017) |
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| Webster | Apr 7 2017, 01:34 AM Post #60 |
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent reports: The Russian foreign ministry has said it will make a statement soon on the US action. There has been a lot of negative comment so far, comparing Trump’s move to previous US incursions in the Middle East, but little concrete information about the potential consequences, as people wait for a signal from the Kremlin on how Russia is going to play this. The Pentagon has said there were “multiple conversations” with Russia before the strike, and that “extraordinary precautions” were taken not to target Russians at the base, but we are also yet to hear anything from either the Kremlin or military HQ on how these discussions looked from Moscow. A report on the state news said the US had launched the attack after “baseless” claims that Assad had used chemical weapons. Senator Viktor Ozerov said Trump was “following in the footsteps of Bush Jr who looked for chemical weapons in Iraq, and we all know how that worked out”. Alexei Pushkov, a Russian senator and former top foreign policy official, wrote on Twitter shortly before the US missiles were launched: In the 21st century, every US president has had a war in the Middle East, if not two. If Trump goes into Syria, he’ll sit alongside Bush and Obama. Vladimir Safronkov, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, said: The authors of these plans should stop and think what military operations in Iraq, Libya, and other countries led to. All the consequences will be on the conscience of those who came up with these plans. |
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