U.S President Donald Trump said on Thursday he ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched, declaring he acted in America's "national security interest" against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Reuters reported.
U.S. officials said the military fired dozens of cruise missiles against the airbase controlled by Assad's forces in response to the poison gas attack on Tuesday in a rebel-held area.
Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct U.S. action yet in Syria's six-year-old civil war, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran, Assad's two main military backers.
"Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said from his resort in Mar-a-Lago where he was attending a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Some 50 Tomahawk missiles were launched from U.S. Navy warships, the USS Porter and USS Ross, in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, striking multiple targets - including the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations - on the Shayrat Air Base, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Damage estimates from the strikes, which were conducted at 8:45 p.m. EDT, were not immediately known.
Syrian state TV said that "American aggression" had targeted a Syrian military base with "a number of missiles and cited a Syrian military source as saying the strike had "led to losses."
Trump said: "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched.
"It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump said.
"There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention and ignored the urging of the U.N. Security Council," he added.
Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week's chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack.