Assad
defies NATO after medical centre bombed
Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad says his country no longer fear NATO after
Saturday's failed cruise missile attack by the combined forces of the
western powers.
Mr
Assad told a visiting delegation of Russian MPs his country was “no
longer afraid of NATO” after Syria's 30-year-old Russian-made air
defences shot down around around 70 per cent of the incoming
missiles, with no hits scored on military bases.
“According
to the president's point of view, this was aggression and we share
this position,” State Duma member Sergei Zheleznyak said, according
to Sputnik International. “He has highly appreciated Russian
weapons, which showed supremacy over the arms of the aggressors.”
The
US, Britain and France claimed they hit a chemical weapons facility
in the attack in the small hours of Saturday morning. But the
Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported the target was the
Pharmaceutical and Chemical Industries Research Institute in Barzeh,
a northern suburb of Damascus.
An
employee of the research centre told
CBS correspondent Seth Doane
his office had been in one of the destroyed buildings. "The
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) visited
here and didn't report anything wrong with this place," he said.
Iraqi
Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said the attack “could drag
the region into serious repercussions which threaten its security and
stability, and could create an opportunity for terrorism to expand.”
Short-lived pretext
The
three Western nuclear powers launched their attack days after OPCW
team arrived to examine the site of the alleged chemical weapons
attack in Douma, just a few miles west of Barzeh, pre-empting the UN
agency's findings.
A
White House statement said it had acted merely on the basis of media
reports —
which in turn were based solely on unverified claims by the so-called
White Helmets and the Syrian American Medical Society. Both
organisations are funded by the US government through the US Agency
for International Development and operate only in terrorist-occupied
areas of Syria.
Russian response
On
Saturday the Russian armed forces General Staff said Syria's older
S-200, S-125 and Buk surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) had shot down 71
of 103 missiles launched, including all 12 missiles targeting the Ad
Dumayr air base east of the capital.
“This
strike is not a response to an alleged chemical attack, but a
reaction to the success of the Syrian armed forces in the liberation
of its territory from international terrorism,” the General Staff
stressed, coming “exactly on the day, when the OPCW special mission
was set to start its work.”
The
statement also revealed that Russia had declined to sell Syria its
state-of-the-art S-300 SAMs several years ago on “the request of
some of our Western partners,” adding: “Taking into account what
happened, we consider it possible to return to this issue. And not
only with regard to Syria, but with regard to other states.”