US launches more than 50 cruise missiles at Assad regime airfields over Syrian chemical attack

The US Navy has reportedly launched 59 cruise missiles at an airfield controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in response to a chemical attack that killed at least 80 people in the northwestern part of the country on Monday.

Tomahawk missiles were launched from two Navy warships stationed in the Mediterranean according to CNN, and NBC News.

No casualties have yet been reported but officials tell NBC News that no people were targeted.

In previous statments from US President Donald Trump’s administration initially resisted the idea of becoming involved in Syria, but CNN’s Jim Acosta reports that he was moved by images of children killed in the attack on Monday. Autopsies have confirmed involved chemical weapons, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there can be “no doubt” that Assad’s forces carried out the attack.

Both Syrian and Russian forces denied the attack, with Russian forces claiming that a conventional airstrike merely hit a cache of chemical weapons owned by rebels in Syria. International experts have dismissed this as an “infantile argument.”

Though the attack targeted infrastruce and runways, a large volley of cruise missiles carries the risk of collateral damage to troops stationed nearby. Foreign Policy’s Paul McLeary reports that the US notified Russian servicemen in Syria before the attack.

Russia’s deputy envoy to the UN told reporters that there would be “negative consequences” for “thosewho initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise” should attacks occur in Syria, as noted by NBC.

Russian and US warplanes have operated over Syria’s contested airspace since Russia’s entrance into the Syrian conflict in October 2015. The US became involved in the country by training and equipping vetted groups of rebels fighting against Assad as early as 2011.

In 2014, the US and a coalition of 68 other nations joined together to destroy ISIS, a terrorist group that declared territory in the eastern part of Syria and parts of Iraq. The US currently has a limited number of ground troops in Eastern Syria, away from the Assad regime, to support local forces in the fight against ISIS.

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