The United States and Russia were on a collision course over Syria on Wednesday after a horrific chemical attack so shocked President Donald Trump that Washington threatened unilateral US action.

At least 86 people were killed Tuesday in rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in northern Syria and dozens more are being treated after they were found convulsing and foaming at the mouth.

After previous major chemical attacks in Syria in 2013, Trump strongly urged then president Barack Obama not to order military intervention against Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

And he came to office promising both to improve ties with Assad’s ally President Vladimir Putin of Russia and to focus US efforts in Syria solely on the defeat of the Islamic State group. 

But on Wednesday — as pictures and footage emerged of Syrian children choking to death in agony — he declared that his view of the conflict had been changed by the “intolerable” attack.

“It crossed a lot of lines for me,” Trump told reporters at a joint White House news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah, alluding to Obama’s failure to enforce his own 2013 “red line.”

“When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, little babies… that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines,” he warned.

“I will tell you, it’s already happened, that my attitude towards Syria and Assad has changed very much… You’re now talking about a whole different level.”

Trump did not go into detail about what any US response to the atrocity would be — and he has previously opposed deeper US military involvement in Syria’s civil war.

But his statement that his attitude had changed came after the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, had warned of unilateral American action.

“When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” she said.

The warning came during an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council called by France and Britain after the attack was carried out in the early hours on Tuesday.

Haley lashed out at Russia for failing to rein in its ally Syria, standing in the UN Security Council with photographs of lifeless children, choked in the attack.

“How many more children have to die before Russia cares?” she demanded.

“If Russia has the influence in Syria that it claims to have, we need to see them use it,” she said. “We need to see them put an end to these horrific acts.”

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is due in Moscow next week for talks with senior Russian officials that will now be clouded by the Khan Sheikhun controversy.

– ‘Categorically unacceptable’ –

At the United Nations, Britain, France and the United States have presented a draft resolution demanding a full investigation of the attack.

Russia, along with Iran, is Syria’s main diplomatic and military partner. And Moscow, true to form, said the draft Security Council text was “categorically unacceptable.”

The draft backs a probe by the Organization of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and demands Syria provide information on its operations.

Russia’s Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the UN council that the proposed resolution was hastily prepared and unnecessary, but voiced support for an inquiry.

“The main task now is to have an objective inquiry into what happened,” he said.

Negotiations were continuing on the draft text and diplomats said there would not be a vote before Thursday at the earliest.

“We are talking about war crimes here, war crimes on a large scale, war crimes with chemical weapons,” French Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters as he entered the council chamber.

Moscow, which launched a military intervention in 2015 in support of Assad’s forces, defended the government against accusations of responsibility for the attack.

It claimed the deaths were caused when a Syrian strike hit a “terrorist warehouse” used for making bombs containing “toxic substances” and pledged to continue its military support for Assad.

Assad’s Syrian army has denied any use of chemical weapons, saying it “has never used them, anytime, anywhere, and will not do so in the future”.

– ‘A gas so lethal’ –

But doctors said victims showed symptoms consistent with the use of a nerve agent such as sarin — suspected to have been used by government forces in deadly attacks outside Damascus in 2013.

US officials have not said what kind of agent they think was used, but Trump said it was “a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was.”

If confirmed, the attack would be among the worst incidents of chemical weapons use in Syria’s civil war, which has killed over 320,000 people since it began in March 2011.

It unfolded in the early hours of Tuesday, with warplanes carrying out strikes on Khan Sheikhun, in the northwestern province of Idlib, according to witnesses and a monitoring group.

Medics worked frantically in the hours after 

source: AFP