Homs Strike News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Civilians might get caught up in this? >> well, absolutely. the first two days after -- in the aftermath you could say of the suspected chemical weapons attack, everyone in damascus and in syria was on very high alert, expecting an immediate, an imminent attack by the united states of america. now, after, you could say, 48 hours of political maneuvering, it seems as if the situation began to go in a process of de-escalation. so people in damascus continued their lives. they didn't expect any impending strike. so what happened in the early hours of this morning were that people were very shocke...

Indian ocean. we also have forces that are down here. this is where the strikes came from. i think what's important to realize here as well is that russian forces in syria are co-located in many locations where syrian forces are. what we see here, this indicates that russian forces are here. it's also a location where syrian forces are. so you have strike packages that might be going into locations like this or in damascus where you have proximity. you need to have standoff. we do not want to go to war with russia. that is not the intention. escalation is not the objective. de-escalation on th...

Put pressure on bashar not to use chemicals. >> i remember you made that point when i spoke to you earlier this week that the war is essentially won in that regard. just my last question to you, sir. do you think it may have been slightly premature for the strike to take place today before the opcw have actually said that, yes, we can verify there was a chemical weapons attack. i know the u.s. has its own intelligence, as does france and the uk. what do you think? >> actually i thought we should have done this several days ago. i think we waited too long because by the time we launched this at...

Try and determine exactly how successful this strike was. now, secretary mattis saying two times -- over two times the number of weapons were used in this series of strikes than were used last year when a similar strike was carried out. 59 missiles whether used that time, so definitely a ramping up of the military assets involved. we know that multiple different types of aircraft and naval vessels were involved in the operation as well. so a much larger operation than last year. still reviewing the battle damage assessment. we do expect a briefing from the pentagon in the next few hours to pro...

And rafael jets were used to launch standoff cruise missiles. these are planes that have a range of about 250 kilometers, so that would put them well out of syrian airspace. in addition, three frigates were also used to launch cruise missiles from the mediterranean. one of the interesting things here is reporters also pressed the presidential office on whether or not russia was informed of the strikes that were being targeted. and what we understand is those so-called deconfliction calls were made during the strike, not before. so that's an interesting clarification to come from the french pre...