Syria ally Russia has warned of "consequences" following the launch of US-led strikes against Bashar al-Assad's regime in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack.
Syria ally Russia has warned of "consequences" following the launch of US-led strikes against Bashar al-Assad's regime in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack.
"Again, we are being threatened," Russia's ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, said in a statement.
"We warned that such actions will not be left without consequences. All responsibility for them rests with Washington, London and Paris." "Insulting the President of Russia is unacceptable and inadmissible," added the envoy, after President Donald Trump directly called out his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over his support for the Assad regime.
Earlier, Vassily Nebenzia, Moscow's ambassador to the United Nations, said he "cannot exclude" war between the United States and Russia and urged Washington and its allies to refrain from military action against Syria.
"The immediate priority is to avert the danger of war," he told reporters. "We hope there will be no point of no return," the envoy said.
A team of experts from the global chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was traveling to Syria and will start its investigations on Saturday, the Netherlands-based agency said.
It was not clear whether Trump and U.S. allies would wait for the results of the investigation before deciding on a strike.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress he believed there was a chemical attack in Syria, but added a short while later that the United States had not made any decision to launch military action. He also suggested he was examining ways to prevent any strikes from triggering a broader conflict.
"I don't want to talk about a specific attack that is not yet in the offing ... This would be pre-decisional," Mattis told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.
Moscow is estimated to have dozens of aircraft at its Hmeymim air base in Syria including fighters and bombers, as well as 10 to 15 warships and support vessels in the Mediterranean.
The Syrian government and Russian forces in Syria possess truck-mounted surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapons systems.
Nervous world stock markets showed signs of recovery after Trump's signal that military strikes might not be imminent.
Britain's May won backing from her senior ministers to take unspecified action with the United States and France to deter further use of chemical weapons by Syria.
May had recalled the ministers from their Easter holiday for the meeting to discuss Britain's response to what she has cast as a barbaric attack that cannot go unchallenged.
Russian ships had left the Tartus naval base in Syria, Interfax news agency quoted a Russian lawmaker as saying. Vladimir Shamanov, who chairs the defense committee of the lower house, said the vessels had departed the base for their own safety, which was "normal practice" when there were threats of attack.
Any US strike would probably involve the Navy, given the risk to aircraft from Russian and Syrian air defenses. A U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, is in the Mediterranean. Last year, the United States carried out strikes from two Navy destroyers against a Syrian air base after another deadly toxic gas attack on a rebel-controlled area.
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