{"id":356700,"date":"2018-04-14T06:07:59","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T05:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-attacks-syria-with-chemical-experts-on-the-way-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-04-14T06:07:59","modified_gmt":"2018-04-14T05:07:59","slug":"trump-attacks-syria-with-chemical-experts-on-the-way-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-attacks-syria-with-chemical-experts-on-the-way-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Attacks Syria With Chemical Experts on the Way \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President Trump ordered airstrikes on Syria as a team of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of\u00a0Chemical Weapons was about to arrive on Saturday to determine whether a chemical weapons attack had even occurred, Joe Lauria reports.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By Joe Lauria<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Donald Trump on Saturday (Syria time)\u00a0ordered air strikes against Syria in retaliation for an alleged\u00a0chemical weapons attack last weekend outside Damascus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ordered the United States armed forces to launch precision strikes\u00a0on targets associated with the chemical weapon capabilities of Syrian\u00a0dictator Bashar al-Assad,\u201d Trump said from the White House.<\/p>\n

The strikes were carried out together with Britain and France, he\u00a0said.\u00a0 CNN reported explosions at a research facility near Damascus. At a news conference later, Pentagon officials said this \u201cphase\u201d of the missile strikes against three targets, one in the center of the Syrian capital, were completed and \u201cno additional attacks are planned.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. officials said Russia had been told of the military operation and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told a press conference Friday night (Washington time) that Moscow was not informed of the Syrian targets.\u00a0Russia had vowed to shoot down incoming U.S. and allied missiles as\u00a0Russian military personnel are embedded with the Syrian\u00a0Arab army at various locations in the country.<\/p>\n

U.S. military analysts say the U.S. wanted to avoid hitting Russian targets, but once unleashed, military action can lead to unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

Pentagon officials said they only had reports that Syrian, but not Russian, anti-missile defenses had been engaged. Whether any U.S. missiles or planes were hit would be made plain on Saturday morning in Washington, they said.<\/p>\n

OPCW Team Was on the Way<\/strong><\/p>\n

A team of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of\u00a0Chemical Weapons was on its way to Syria after accepting an invitation from the\u00a0Syrian government to study soil and other samples in Duma, the Damascus suburb where the alleged attack took place.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not\u00a0clear whether the U.S.-led operation would complicate their mission as\u00a0the team was due to arrive later on…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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

President Trump ordered airstrikes on Syria as a team of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of\u00a0Chemical Weapons was about to arrive on Saturday to determine whether a chemical weapons attack had even occurred, Joe Lauria reports.\u00a0 By Joe Lauria President Donald Trump on Saturday (Syria time)\u00a0ordered air strikes against Syria in retaliation for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-356700","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\/356700","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\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}