Russia responds strongly to US missile attack on Syria
Russia said that the US missile strike on its ally Syria amounted to "aggression against a sovereign nation" and is likely to "damage US-Russia relations, which are already in a poor state." The US had fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on a Syrian government airbase said to have been used to launch a chemical attack that killed over 100 civilians.


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The Turkish deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmu?, has backed the US strikes.Speaking on Turkish Fox TV, Kurtulmu? said he hoped the operation would contribute to achieving peace in Syria, and said the international community needed to maintain pressure on Assad.

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In its first public response to the airstrikes, the Kremlin has issued a strong statement condemning the US move as ?aggression against a sovereign nation?.Moscow said the strikes had been carried out on an ?invented pretext? and claimed the Syrian army did not have chemical weapons.The strikes, it said, would do ?significant damage to US-Russia ties? and created a ?serious obstacle? to creating an international coalition to defeat Isis.Russian president Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said, views the strikes as an attempt to deflect world attention from civilian deaths in Iraq ? where at least 150 people died in a series of coalition airstrikes in Mosul last month.

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Iran has condemned the US missile strike on Syria, Associated Press reports:Foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said the ?unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law?, in a report carried Friday by the semi-official ISNA news agency.Iran is one of the biggest supporters of Assad and its hardline paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is deeply involved in the war.Ghasemi described Iran as ?the biggest victim of chemical weapons in recent history?, referencing Iraqi use of the weapons during its 1980s war. He said Iran condemned the missile launch ?regardless of the perpetrators and the victims? of Tuesday?s chemical weapons attack in Syria.He also warned it would ?strengthen terrorists? and further add to ?the complexity of the situation in Syria and the region?.

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In addition, Shaun Walker reports, there?s a big round of diplomacy ahead in Russia next week: US secretary of state Rex Tillerson is due in Moscow on Wednesday and is expected to meet with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and president Vladimir Putin.Boris Johnson is in Moscow on Monday and will meet Lavrov. 

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Shaun WalkerThe Guardian?s Moscow correspondent reports:The Russian foreign ministry has said it will make a statement soon on the US action. There has been a lot of negative comment so far, comparing Trump?s move to previous US incursions in the Middle East, but little concrete information about the potential consequences, as people wait for a signal from the Kremlin on how Russia is going to play this.The Pentagon has said there were ?multiple conversations? with Russia before the strike, and that ?extraordinary precautions? were taken not to target Russians at the base, but we are also yet to hear anything from either the Kremlin or military HQ on how these discussions looked from Moscow.A report on the state news said the US had launched the attack after ?baseless? claims that Assad had used chemical weapons. Senator Viktor Ozerov said Trump was ?following in the footsteps of Bush Jr who looked for chemical weapons in Iraq, and we all know how that worked out?.Alexei Pushkov, a Russian senator and former top foreign policy official, wrote on Twitter shortly before the US missiles were launched:In the 21st century, every US president has had a war in the Middle East, if not two. If Trump goes into Syria, he?ll sit alongside Bush and Obama.Vladimir Safronkov, Russia?s deputy UN ambassador, said:The authors of these plans should stop and think what military operations in Iraq, Libya, and other countries led to. All the consequences will be on the conscience of those who came up with these plans.

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Britain, too, has issued a show of support for the US action against Syria.A Downing Street spokeswoman said:The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.

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Gareth HutchensAustralia?s prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said he ?strongly supports? the US military strike on Syria?s al-Shayrat airfield, calling it a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response to the Syrian regime?s ?shocking war crime?.He said Australia was in close discussions with its allies about the next steps, but said the airstrike had sent an important signal that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. In a specially-convened press conference in Sydney on Friday, Turnbull said:It sends a strong message to the Assad regime.The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift. We support the United States in that swift action.Turnbull said it was important to note that the international community was not at war with the Assad regime, and the US had made it clear it was not seeking to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.However, he said events of this week raised ?very real questions? over whether Assad could remain as leader of Syria:This chemical attack was a horrific crime, shocking, even in the context of that brutal war.Turnbull said the US had not asked for more military support, but he left open the possibility of providing it in the future:There is no question that this shocking conflict in Syria is crying out itself for a resolution and we certainly will continue to work with our allies and our partners to see a resolution to this shocking war.

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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organisation that monitors the war, says al-Shayrat airbase has been almost completely destroyed.There are reports that some troops have been killed, but this is as yet unconfirmed.

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Elle HuntA mainstay of US warfare for more than 20 years, the Tomahawk cruise missile had been considered the most likely weapon for any strike by the Trump administration against the Syrian military. And so it proved.The US launched its surprise attack on an inland airbase near Homs early on Thursday morning, with 59 of the missiles deployed from two naval destroyers. USS Ross and USS Porter were in the eastern Mediterranean sea off Syria?s western coast.More than 6.25m long (20ft) and weighing 1,590kg (3,500lb), the Tomahawk land-attack missile is billed by the US navy as ?an all-weather, long range, subsonic cruise missile? able to be launched from either ships or submarines.They commonly carry warheads of up to 454kg (1,000lb), and are designed to fly at low altitudes towards even heavily defended land targets with extreme accuracy.Their chief advantage in warfare is that they are unmanned, guided by GPS to targets more than 1,600km (1,000 miles) away at high subsonic speeds of 885km/h (550mph).

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Russia is waking up to news of the strike ? though we know military channels were used to alert Moscow before the missiles were launched ? and reaction so far has been hostile.State news agency RIA quoted Viktor Ozerov, head of the defence and security committee at the Russian upper house of parliament, saying the US strikes could undermine the fight against terrorism.Ozerov said Russia would call for an urgent meeting of the UN security council: This [the attack] could be viewed as an act of aggression of the US against a UN nation.