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.
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.
