{"id":303307,"date":"2017-04-12T00:07:23","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T23:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/damascus-responsible-for-chemical-attack-mattis-claims\/"},"modified":"2017-04-12T17:49:32","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T16:49:32","slug":"damascus-responsible-for-chemical-attack-mattis-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/damascus-responsible-for-chemical-attack-mattis-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Damascus responsible for chemical attack, Mattis claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Defense Secretary James Mattis has reiterated unfounded allegations against the Syrian government over\u00a0use of chemical weapons, saying there is \u201cno doubt\u201d that Damascus was responsible for a recent gas attack.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Last Tuesday, on the 4th of April, the Syrian regime attacked its own people using chemical weapons,” claimed the US military chief during a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday. “I have personally reviewed the intelligence and there is no doubt the Syrian regime is responsible for the decision to attack and for the attack itself.”<\/p>\n

Mattis made the remarks after Washington repeatedly held Damascus responsible for a last week\u2019s chemical attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria\u2019s Idlib province, which claimed over 80 lives.<\/p>\n

Syria has categorically denied the accusation and stressed that its Idlib airstrike had targeted a depot, where terrorists stored chemical weapons.<\/p>\n

In retaliation for the suspected gas attack, US President Donald Trump ordered two US Navy destroyers to fire 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea at Syria\u2019s al-Shayrat airfield early on Friday, claiming that the airfield had been used to store chemical weapons and Syrian aircraft.<\/p>\n

During the Tuesday briefing, the Pentagon chief also stressed that Washington’s military strategy in Syria has not changed even after its retaliatory missile strikes on a Syrian airbase, claiming that, “our priority remains the defeat” of the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group.<\/p>\n

In September 2014, the US and some of its allies started conducting airstrikes inside Syria allegedly against Daesh terrorists.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Defense Secretary James Mattis has reiterated unfounded allegations against the Syrian government over\u00a0use of chemical weapons, saying there is \u201cno doubt\u201d that Damascus was responsible for a recent gas attack. “Last Tuesday, on the 4th of April, the Syrian regime attacked its own people using chemical weapons,” claimed the US military chief during a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-303307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}