WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States did not warn Russia prior to launching its missile strike on the base of the Syrian Air Force, and instead informed Moscow only through military channels, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said.
“When it came to this strike, our military team was engaged in a regular course of action of deconflicting, because we [the United States and Russia] are both operating in Syria, so we have made sure we deconflicted our military responsibilities, but there was no contact with Moscow in terms of political leadership there prior to the strike,” Spicer told the Fox News broadcaster.
On Thursday night, the United States carried out a cruise missile attack on the Syrian military airfield in Ash Sha’irat, located in the vicinity of the Homs city. US President Donald Trump said the attack was a response to the reported chemical weapon use in Idlib, for which Washington put the blame on the government of President Bashar Assad.
Earlier this year, Assad said that the country’s government had never used weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons, against the Syrian people. Besides, under a Russian-US deal after the east Ghouta sarin gas incident in 2013, Damascus joined the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and agreed to destroy its stockpile under Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) oversight. In January 2016, the OPCW announced that all chemical weapons in Syria had been destroyed.
