Less than a day after being attacked by a salvo of 59 Tomohawk cruise missiles, Bashar al-Assad’s planes are back flying missions out of the al-Shayrat airbase in Syria.

Though each missile carried a 1000 lb warhead, Syrians loyal to Assad nevertheless managed to repair the damage straight away so that modern fighter jets would be able to take off and land.

This has caught the attention of Pittsburgh City council, who are also concerned with fixing huge craters in tarmac, though in their case the craters are in Pittsburgh roads rather than runways used to bomb Syrians in regions held by opponents of the Government regime.

Mayor Peduto said he has already contacted the Syrian Army engineers responsible and explained our situation to them.

“They sounded confident they could help, though I tried to impress upon them that being bombarded by US Navy warships was not the same as dealing with the freeze-thaw cycles of a Pittsburgh winter, and our craters were probably much bigger than what they are used to.”

Peduto then joked that if they succeed in fixing the city’s streets he finally might be able to convince Pittsburghers to make a Syrian feel welcome here.