Defying Trump, Assad regime bombs Syria gas attack town again

A suspected Syrian regime warplane today bombed the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, where a chemical attack killed scores of people this week and prompted US missile strikes in the early hours of this morning, a witness in the opposition-held area and a war monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based organisation that monitors the war, said a Syrian government or Russian warplane hit Khan Sheikhoun in opposition-held Idlib province before noon.

The Syrian army and the Russian defence ministry could not immediately be reached for comment, but analysts have been expecting some kind of probing attacks as a response to a US strike against an Assad regime airbase earlier today.

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The witness, an activist working with an air raid warning service in opposition areas, said the jet struck at around 11 am local time (0800 GMT) at the northern edge of the town, causing damage but no known casualties.

The United States fired dozens of cruise missiles on Friday at an airfield from which it said the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack was launched that killed around 100 people on Tuesday.

Washington blamed the sarin gas attack on Syrian government forces. The Syrian government strongly denies responsibility and says it does not use chemical weapons, despite extensive reporting indicating that it does and has done since at least 2013 when 1,400 people were killed by another regime chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta near Damascus.

The Observatory and the witness said earlier this week that the aircraft which they accused of carrying out the suspected gas attack had flown out of the Shayrat air base, the one attacked by US missiles earlier today.

The Syrian army said the missile attack on its airbase killed six people and caused extensive damage, describing it as a “blatant aggression“.