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.

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.