About 60 Missiles Tomahawk they were launched by the US Navy against Al Sharyat air base in Syria. The attack was conducted by missile destroyers Ross e Potter of the class Arleigh Burke, which cross in the Mediterranean.
In addition to some deaths among the personnel of the base, some material damage was recorded: infrastructures (hangar, the only runway, storage warehouses) and about 9 fighters destroyed. There were no Russian personnel on the base at the time of the attack.
The Syrian base is about 20 km south-east of Homs and is the main structure used to provide airborne coverage at the Palmira and Deir Ezzor fronts. Just a few hours after the attack, ISIS units would try to take advantage of the situation by bombing checkpoints and Syrian army stations.
The attack would be Assad's response to the alleged use of chemical weapons, although there are strong indications that the rebels were making non-conventional weapons.
As soon as news of the attack, which militarily has the immediate effect of helping the Islamic State, the Turkish President Erdogan and the Israeli leader Netanyahu have expressed their pleasure.
What happens then in Syria?
Trump closes the announcement of the attack, calling the whole world to arms against terrorism.
At a first reading the short circuit is total. The American President, in just 24 hours, would have renounced the project of collaboration against fundamentalism proposed to Russia and decided to take it out with Syria, ally of Moscow and at this moment the only country in the world that fights on the ground the fundamentalists Islamic. Not even Obama had managed to do much.
The backgrounds are disturbing. Forced by the anti-rogue military lobby to move, the president would be trying to prove to himself not to be a puppet in Moscow's hands.
After the plight of Michael Flynn and Bannon, the Old Guard Atlanteans seem to be taking over and exulting. Trump would be forced to flee away every day more than promised in foreign policy in the electoral campaign.
To reunite the home front, made up of interventionist Democrats (despite the blow of November 9, Hillary Clinton has been calling all Western chancelleries to war against Assad for weeks) and conservative Republicans linked to the logic of the Cold War, Trump had to move. That he did it the wrong way, we'll see in the near future.
It must be said, however, that in all likelihood the attack will remain isolated and politically demonstrative. The American President would have thus for the moment curbed Washington's anti-Russian hawks who are writhing at the idea of an axis with Putin and who are pressing against his investiture (there is talk of impeachment practically from January 20, the day of the inauguration).
Navalny, attacked in St. Petersburg (forgotten by everyone), chemical weapons, military reaction of Trump ... The sequence of recent weeks concretizes a somewhat embarrassing scenario ...
(photo: US DoD)
