Sophie Mangal |
On April 7, between 3.42am and 3.56am, a massive rocket attack was carried out from an area near Crete Island in the Mediterranean Sea. Two destroyers of the US Navy (USS Ross and USS Porter) launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian Al-Shayrat airbase in Homs Province. According to various mass media, only 23 of them reached the Syrian airbase.
The strike on the Al-Shayrat airbase in Syria’s Homs Province destroyed a material storage depot, a training facility, a canteen, six Mig-23 aircraft in repair hangars and a radar station. The runway, taxiways and the Syrian aircraft remain undamaged.
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According to the command of the Syrian airbase, two Syrian military personnel were missing, four were killed and six were burned in the firefighting. The remaining 36 cruise missiles hit the surrounding peaceful settlements.
As a result, five civilians including three children were killed in the village of Al-Shayrat located 1.5 km east of the airbase. Seven citizens were wounded in Al-Manzul (1 km north of the airfield).
Four people including one child were killed in Al-Hamrat (4.5 km southeast of the airfield). Thus the combat effectiveness of the American massive missile strike against the Syrian airbase proved to be extremely low.
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All the accusations of the alleged violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention that was put forward by the US as a justification for the strike are groundless.
The statements of the US side about the alleged evidence of the Syrian army using chemical weapons must be confirmed by real facts and presented to the world community.
The US has to prove the existence of unquestionable evidence that chemical weapons were used by the Syrian army in Khan Shaykhun.
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It is well-known that between 2013 and 2016 the Syrian government has fully implemented all measures to eliminate the existing chemical weapons as well as their delivery means and their production basis. All the stocks were destroyed. The components for the production of chemical weapons were removed from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic and then destroyed at enterprises in the US, Finland, Great Britain, and Germany.
Sophie Mangal is a freelance writer and a member of the Inside Syria Media Center. After attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a media and journalism major, Mangal monitored the refugee crisis in Europe, drawing parallels between the Syrian conflict and the Balkan problem, and has visited Syria on several occasions. This article was first published in Russia News Now and is republished with the permission of the author.