The White House on Tuesday warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that if he uses chemical weapons against his people again, the US and its allies “will respond swiftly and appropriately.”
“The United States is closely monitoring the situation in Idlib province, Syria, where millions of innocent civilians are under threat of an imminent Assad regime attack, backed by Russia and Iran,” the White House said in a statement.
President Trump “has warned that such an attack would be a reckless escalation of an already tragic conflict and would risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of people,” the administration said.
The warning comes as the UN urged Russia – a key supporter of Assad that has complained about militants in Idlib targeting its own facilities – and Turkey to help avert a “bloodbath” in the rebel-held province.
Renewed Russian airstrikes on Syria’s last major rebel stronghold killed at least nine civilians, according to a monitor.
Rebel-backer Turkey has held several rounds of talks with Moscow aimed at averting a major assault on Idlib, but the Kremlin on Tuesday dubbed the province a “pocket of terrorism” as Syrian troops massed near the region.
A major assault would be devastating for the nearly three million people living in the northwestern province, many of them rebels and civilians who were moved out of other areas as they came back under regime control.
The UN’s Syria peace envoy, Staffan de Mistura, called on Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to urgently speak on the phone even before they are set to meet with their Iranian counterpart in Tehran on Friday.
De Mistura cited press reports indicating that Syria has set a Sept. 10 deadline for finding a solution before it begins an all-out offensive on the province.
“Let’s try to avoid that the last probably major battle of the Syrian territorial conflict…ends in a bloodbath,” he told reporters in Geneva, insisting Russia and Turkey held “the key for the soft solution to the Idlib issue.”
His appeal came after Russian warplanes resumed airstrikes on Idlib after a 22-day hiatus.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on sources in Syria for its reports, said at least nine civilians — including five children from the same family — were killed in the raids, while 10 people were wounded.
On Monday, President Trump joined a growing chorus of voices warning the Syrian government against a full scale assault, which he said could trigger a “human tragedy.”
Seized from government forces in 2015, Idlib and surrounding areas form the last major swath of territory still in rebel hands.
Tuesday’s bombardment hit several areas held by the jihadist-led Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance, among them the town of Jisr al-Shughur, but also areas held by rival Turkish-backed rebels, according to Agence France-Presse.
The Syrian military has been sending reinforcements to the area for more than a month, and Russia has ramped up its rhetoric.
“We know that the Syrian armed forces are getting ready to solve this problem,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.
De Mistura said there were about 10,000 fighters with UN-recognized terrorist organizations currently in Idlib.But he stressed that there are some 2.9 million civilians in the province — including about a million children who “are not terrorists.”
In April 2017, the US military attacked a Syrian government airfield near Homs with 59 Tomahawk missiles in response to a chemical weapons attack.
At the time, Trump said the targeted airfield had launched the chemical attack on a rebel-held area.
According to an upcoming book by reporter Bob Woodward, Trump wanted to kill al-Assad after he launched the chemical weapons on civilians last year.
The president called Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to issue the deadly order.
“Let’s f–king kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the f–king lot of them,” Trump said, according to the tell-all, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.
Mattis told the president that he’d get right on it — but after hanging up, he told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.”
With Post Wires