Beirut: Residents of the Syrian town devastated by a chemical weapons attack last week said warplanes had returned to bomb them on Saturday, despite a US missile barrage and warnings of possible further response.
At least 86 people in the north-western town of Khan Sheikhoun were killed last Tuesday in a chemical attack that left hundreds choking, gripped by spasms or foaming at the mouth. Eyewitnesses and a monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Saturday that fresh attacks on the area - now a virtual ghost town - had killed one woman and wounded several other people.
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US strikes on Syria draw mixed response
Russia says a US strike on a Syrian airbase poses a threat to international security but Britain and Turkey back the action.
Residents cowered in bedrooms and basements throughout Saturday, underscoring the apparently unchanged threat they faced from the Syrian government's arsenal of rockets, barrel bombs and other weapons that have resulted in a majority of the conflict's half-million dead.
In retaliation for Tuesday's chemical assault, President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike on a Syrian air base housing a jet fleet responsible for extensive bombing across northern Syria.
The barrage of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from two US ships is the first direct military action the United States has taken against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the six-year-long conflict. Although Trump warned of possible further intervention, the Pentagon has said no other strikes against government targets are planned.
American officials had predicted that the missile strike would result in a major shift in Mr Assad's calculus, but the US attack appeared to be symbolic in reality. Within 24 hours of the strike, monitoring groups reported that warplanes were again taking off from the bombed Shayrat air base, this time to attack Islamic State positions.
There were also reports of Syrian government and Russian airstrikes across the provinces of Damascus, Aleppo, Idlib and Daraa, all killing civilians. However, there were no reports of further use of chemical weapons.
"The American strikes did nothing for us. They can still commit massacres at any time," said Majed Khattab, speaking by phone from Khan Sheikhoun. "No one here can sleep properly; people are really afraid."
![US President Donald Trump was dining with Chinese President Xi Jinping when a naval destroyer launched the first of ...](/web/20170411230344im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/g/q/p/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvgyu3.png/1491837172610.jpg)
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu described Mr Trump's decision to retaliate as welcome but not enough.
"If this intervention is limited only to an air base, if it does not continue, and if we don't remove the regime from heading Syria, then this would remain a cosmetic intervention," he said.
![The aftermath: a plane burned as a result of the US missile attack on an air base in Syria.](/web/20170411230344im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/g/v/p/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvgyu3.png/1491776405349.jpg)
A longtime backer of Syria's armed opposition, Turkey is now overseeing a stuttering peace process in the Kazakh capital, Astana, that it hopes will hasten an end to the war.
Elsewhere in the region, a leading Iraqi Shiite cleric and militia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, called on Mr Assad to step down and "save Syria before it's too late".
![Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government denied using chemical weapons on its own people.](/web/20170411230344im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/g/j/l/7/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvgyu3.png/1491714862571.jpg)
"President Bashar al-Assad should resign and leave power, for the love of Syria, allowing the dear people of Syria to avoid war and the scourge of terrorism," he said.
Although some of Iraq's Shiite militias that are more directly linked to Iran have fought in support of Mr Assad in Syria, Mr Sadr's Peace Brigades have not, and the cleric promotes himself as a nationalist.
![This picture, provided by the Syrian anti-government activist group Edlib Media Center, shows a man carrying a child ...](/web/20170411230344im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/g/n/5/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvgyu3.png/1491704545785.jpg)
In a statement, he also criticised US and Russian intervention in the country. "I call for a military retreat from Syria by everyone," he said. "They [Syrians] are the only ones who have the right to decide their fate."
In a sign of the continuing diplomatic fallout from the chemical attack and the US response, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced on Saturday that he had cancelled a planned visit to Moscow.
![Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has called upon President Bashar al-Assad to step down to save Syria before it's too ...](/web/20170411230344im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/g/z/9/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvgyu3.png/1491704545785.jpg)
Mr Johnson was to fly to Moscow on Monday to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in what would have been the first such meeting since 2012. But Mr Johnson said in a statement that "developments in Syria have changed the situation fundamentally".
"We deplore Russia's continued defence of the Assad regime even after the chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians," Mr Johnson said.
![British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has cancelled a visit to Moscow in the wake of the Syrian crisis.](/web/20170411230344im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/g/z/d/u/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvgyu3.png/1491704545785.jpg)
Britain has been supportive of the US airstrike against a Syrian air base but has said it has no plans to join the United States in any future attacks.
Meanwhile, Russia and Iran, Mr Assad's most influential supporters, have rallied around him.
Russia condemned the US missile strike and suspended an agreement that would minimise the risk of in-flight incidents between Russian and US military aircraft over Syria.
And on Saturday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in a statement carried by state television, called for the formation of an international fact-finding committee that "must not be headed by Americans".
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a global watchdog, said on Thursday that it had initiated contact with the Syrian government and was investigating the attack on Khan Sheikhoun.
The Washington Post