MILITARY/SYRIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Overnight strikes Thursday [9-8-17] on Syrian military sites — which are said to produce chemical weapons and advanced missiles — brought renewed attention to Syria’s chemical weapons, and appear to have been an escalation of Israel’s efforts to prevent its enemies from gaining access to sophisticated weapons.
The Syrian military said Israeli warplanes had struck the sites early Thursday, killing two people near the town of Masyaf in western Syria and causing unspecified material damage.
Israeli officials did not comment on the strike, but a Syrian monitoring group and two former Israeli officials said it had targeted an installation of a government agency that produced chemical weapons and a military base that produced advanced missiles.
The strike came a day after a United Nations commission accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons in an attack in April that killed dozens in the town of Khan Sheikhoun and flooded clinics with victims gasping for breath.
While many foreign governments and news organizations had previously concluded that Syrian forces were probably behind the attack, the unequivocal condemnation from the United Nations was the most authoritative statement blaming the Syrian government for it.”
-David M. HalbFinger and Ben Hubbard, “Airstrikes on Syrian Military Sites Renew Focus on Chemical Weapons,” The New York Times online, Sept. 7, 2017