(REUTERS) Russia denied on Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was to blame for a poison gas attack and said it would continue to back him, widening a rift between the Kremlin and Donald Trump's White House, which initially sought warmer ties.

Western countries, including the United States, blamed Assad's armed forces for the worst chemical attack in Syria for more than four years, which choked scores of people to death in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in a rebel-held area on Tuesday.

U.S. intelligence officials, based on a preliminary assessment, think the deaths were most likely caused by sarin nerve gas dropped by Syrian aircraft. But Moscow offered an alternative explanation that would shield Assad: that the poison gas belonged to rebels and had leaked from an insurgent weapons depot hit by Syrian bombs.

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