MOSCOW, April 8. /TASS/. Dozens of people, who visited the Shayrat base in Syria after the U.S. Strike, did not see there any traces of chemical weapons, spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry Major-General Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday.
"Dozens representatives of the media, local administration, fire services, police, to leave alone the Syrian military - have visited the aerodrome," he said. "At Shayrat they have not seen depots or moreover chemical ammunition - all the people at the aerodrome do not wear masks and feel absolutely well."
"Thus, comes a question: who and what once again had been presented to another U.S. president as a "proof" of "chemical weapons" in a country disagreeable to Washington?" the spokesman said. "Once again this resembles the story with Colin Powell’s white powder or reports to the UK prime minister about the claimed chemical weapons in Iraq."
On April 6, following an order from the U.S. President Donald Trump, the U.S. armed forces fired a total of 59 Tomahawk subsonic cruise missiles on a military airfield in Syria’s Homs Governorate. The strike came as a response to the chemical attack in Idlib on April 4 and targeted what Washington claims was a starting location for the attack.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the airstrike left four Syrian servicemen dead, two missing and four injured. Syria’s governmental SANA news agency said six people died, but later reported the deaths of nine civilians. On that day, the ministry said, the Syrian air force bombarded shops, where the militants produced ammunition with poisonous substances, what were supplied to Iraq and used in Aleppo.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow views the incident as aggression against a sovereign state, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described it as an act of aggression under a far-fetched pretext.