About 59 Tomahawk missiles were launched from US Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A target was identified as an airbase in Homs. The USS Ross fires a Tomahawk missile at Syria from the Mediterranean Sea. Credit:Robert S. Price/US Navy via AP General Ali Ayyoub , the chief of the General Staff of the Syrian Army, said Washington has used the chemical attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun earlier this week as a "pretext" to carry out the "blatant aggression" , without knowing what really happened. Syria blames the opposition fighters of stockpiling chemical weapons. A statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry says it wants an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss U.S. missile strikes on Syria. It also stated that it was suspending a deal with the U.S. to exchange flight information to prevent mid-air collisions over Syria, in response to the U.S. strike on the air base.

A statement from the Kremlin on Friday afternoon said the US strike on Syria was "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law," according to Associated Press. Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "the Syrian army doesn't have chemical weapons", adding this had been confirmed by a United Nations chemical weapons unit. President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. Credit:AP Putin saw the US missile strike on Syria as an attempt to distract attention from civilian casualties in Iraq, Peskov said. "This step deals significant damage to US-Russian ties, which are already in a deplorable state." Syria's information minister told a Syrian TV network the US strike was "limited" and "expected". He said he does not expect military escalation following the missile launch. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter in the Mediterranean Sea last month. Credit:AP

In a statement, Trump cited the innocent suffering of civilians in making the decision to launch the missiles. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," he said. "It was a slow and brutal death for so many. A Tomahawk missile is launched during a test in 2010 in the Pacific Ocean. Credit:USNavy "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered at this very barbaric attack. "No child of God should ever suffer such horror."

A Syrian doctor treats a boy following a suspected chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Credit:AP The President said the US must "prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons". He said there was "no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons". Bashar al-Assad is thumbing his nose at the West. Credit:AP "Tonight, I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the [slaughter] and bloodshed in Syria," he said.

"Also, to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. "We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world," Trump said. Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week's chemical attack, which killed more than 80 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. Trump, who was attending a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort, said earlier on Thursday that "something should happen" with Assad as the White House and Pentagon studied military options.

Russia's warning US military action put the new President at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assad's side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups. A US defence official said the US had been in contact with Russia throughout the day leading up to the missile attack, according to CNN. Nevertheless, Russians were located at the targeted base, as well, the network reported. There was no indication about what happened to them. Syrian state TV described the attack as "American aggression" that targeted Syrian military targets.

Just before the attack, Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned of "negative consequences" if the US carried out military strikes against Syria over the deadly gas attack. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia failed to carry out a 2013 agreement to secure Syrian chemical weapons. Tillerson said Moscow was either complicit, or incompetent, in its ability to carry out the agreement. Russian news agencies later quoted a senior Russian lawmaker as saying that Russia's coalition with the US on the Syria crisis was in doubt. Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian Parliament, said the strikes were intended to "stamp an earlier verdict about Assad's responsibility for a chemical attack in Idlib with gunpowder", the Interfax news agency reported.

Strategy change Trump has until now focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. The risks have grown worse since 2013, when Barack Obama, Trump's predecessor, considered and then rejected ordering a cruise missile strike in response to the use of chemical weapons by Assad's loyalists. The air strikes were carried out less than an hour after the President concluded a dinner with the President of China at his estate in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, sending an unmistakably aggressive message about Trump's willingness to use the military power at his disposal.

Trump authorised the strike with no congressional approval for the use of force, an assertion of presidential authority that contrasts sharply with the protracted deliberations over the use of force by his predecessor. Two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, praised the strike in a statement and called for Trump to go further and to "take Assad's air force - which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people - completely out of the fight." Strikes serve the terrorists: Homs governor US missile strikes on Syrian military positions serve the goals of "armed terrorist groups" and Islamic State, the Governor of Syria's Homs province said. "Syrian leadership and Syrian policy will not change," Homs Governor Talal Barazi said in a phone interview with state television on Friday.

"This targeting was not the first and I don't believe it will be the last," he added. "The armed terrorist groups and Daesh [Islamic State] failed to target the Syrian Arab Army and Russian military positions," Barazi said. The Syrian government describes all armed groups opposed to it as terrorists. The US strikes "targeted military positions in Syria and in Homs specifically" to publicly "serve the goals of terrorism in Syria and the goals of Israel in the long run", Barazi added. Later, Barazi told Reuters that fire and rescue operations had been going on at the air base for more than two hours. Australia told in advance

The Trump administration informed the Australian government in advance of its plans to launch the Tomahawk missile attack on Syria, Fairfax Media understands. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had pointedly said before news of the strikes broke that the chemical attack on civilians "cries out for a strong response". On Friday morning, Mr Turnbull linked the attacks to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and blamed Russia for failing to rein in its ally. Why Tomahawk missiles? The Tomahawk has been a critical part of US warfare since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and commonly carries a 1000-pound (453-kilogram) warhead.

One of the largest advantages of the Tomahawk is that it does not require a pilot to be anywhere near a potential target. It can be launched from Navy destroyers up to 1600 kilometres away, a tactical consideration when facing enemy air defences. The attack appears to have involved only missiles. US fighter planes, if used, would have had to contend with a modest web of Syrian air defences and potentially more advanced types of surface-to-air missiles provided by Russia. One of Assad's more prevalent systems, the S-200, was used to target Israeli jets last month, but missiles were intercepted by Israeli defence systems. The S-200 has a range of roughly 300 kilometres, according to US military documents, and can hit targets flying at altitudes of around 130,000 feet. Russian S-300 and S-400 missiles, located primarily around Khmeimim air base in western Syria, have a shorter range than the S-200, but have more-advanced radar systems and fly considerably faster than their older counterparts used by Syrian forces. The S-300 has a range of roughly 140 kilometres and could also be used to target incoming US cruise missiles.

Air strike rocks sharemarket, dollar Australia's sharemarket and key Asian exchanges reversed sharply into negative territory on the news the United States had launched the missile strikes. CMC Markets chief market analyst Ric Spooner said the Australian sharemarket had been fairly brittle this week, and investors were responding to the news of the US strike. Mr Spooner said investors would now be looking to see how Russia responds or if the conflict spreads elsewhere into the Middle East. Equites markets in Japan, Korea and Singapore were all lower following news of the strike while gold and oil prices rose and the Australian dollar fell against major currencies.

Mr Spooner said news of the strike was pushing up the oil market because Syria was an oil producer, albeit not a major one. "The region most in the firing line for an escalation is the Middle East, and so if things did get worse, there's concerns that there could be disruption [to oil supply] in Iran and Iraq," Mr Spooner said. The Australian dollar fell to a one-month low with analysts tipping that uncertainty about US and Russia would keep pressure on the currency. The local unit had fallen to 75.24 US cents at 12.30pm AEST, from 75.38 before news broke, its lowest level since March 11. Westpac senior currency strategist Sean Callow said it was a "textbook market response" for traders to sell risk currencies such as the Aussie in times of uncertainty.

He said the market had not expected the attack on a Syrian airbase as Trump had been dining with the Chinese President when it occurred. "The markets weren't ready for the dinner to be wrapped up quickly so the missiles could be fired," he told AAP. Loading "The swing in Trump's rhetoric [about Syria] wasn't expected either." Reuters, New York Times, AAP with Fairfax Media