Transcript for Latest details on US military airstrike on Syria

U.S. Missile strikes on a government airfield in Syria. This is the first time U.S. Forces have launched a direct attack on Syria's government and here's the latest on what we're learning about those 59 tomahawk missiles fired from warships in the mediterranean. All of them aimed at the airstrip where Syrian forces launched the deadly chemical attack earlier this week. Syria and Russia claims six died in that attack. Syria has called it an act of aggression and while it's received some praise from members of congress, critics say president trump should have consulted with congress before making this move. Our whole team is standing by. Let's start with Martha Raddatz. Martha, the president apparently made this decision late yesterday afternoon. It all unfolded very quickly after that. Very quickly. He had secretary Mattis offering him several options, he decided on this one. 59 cruise missile as we said launched from the mediterranean and just learning it took about an hour for those cruise missi missiles to hit their target. They travel at 500 miles an hour and slamming into that air base that was where those planes took off, the U.S. Had actually tracked those planes. They didn't know they had chemical weapons on board at the time. Only one of the planes dropped the chemical weapons but that's where they took off from and they destroyed about 20 plane, maybe the one that dropped those bombs. Syrians saying seven people killed as well and the white house reporting, Jon Karl, this is it for now. A targeted strike to punish Syria for that chemical weapons attack. Deter a future attack but puts questions whether U.S. Has to escalate on the table. It will and what the strategy is, George. What does he do next? He's clearly wanting bashar Al Assad out of office but how does that happen? You've heard Rex tillerson talk about, well, we have to defeat ISIS first but there's no room for Assad. Can they gather the world to go against him? As recently as Monday the president and his team saying, no, we accept the reality of Assad in office. Exactly. Actually the day of the attack just before he saw the pictures he said I don't want to be president of the world. I want to be president of the United States but when he saw those pictures, when he saw those horrible images this all changed.

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