Russia criticises UK decision to cancel Johnson visit to Moscow

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In turn, a USA defense official told Sputnik that this information was incorrect.

The US administration claimed Russian Federation bore some responsibility for the alleged chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians.

In the aftermath of the USA strike, Russian Federation pledged to help strengthen Syria's air defenses.

The swift decision, by a President who had previously shown no interest in entering conflicts like Syria's, set Mr. Trump apart from his predecessor's far more cautious approach to the war. It had earlier picked up supplies at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

Video footage of the attack quickly surfaced, showing women and children gasping for breath and foaming at the mouth as they fought the effects of what officials later said was sarin gas, a brutal nerve agent. Just last week Mr Tillerson said President Assad's future would be "decided by the Syrian people".

An airstrike killed 15 civilians, including four children, in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

The American strikes "aim at slowing the victories of the Syrian army and its allies, and reinforcing terrorist groups", they said in a statement. Syria's Civil Defence volunteer group, also known as The White Helmets, said the death toll was 16, with 20 people injured.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the then North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il disappeared from public view for around six weeks - and it was widely believed that he had gone into hiding for fear of a USA attack. In its first military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the war in Afghanistan, Russia launched air strikes against Syrian rebels from September 30, 2015.

While Nikki Haley, the USA ambassador to the United Nations, described regime change in Syria as a US priority and inevitable, Tillerson suggested that last week's American air strikes in retaliation for the chemical attack hadn't really changed US priorities toward ousting Assad.

He said despite the fact that the missile strikes were quite limited and Washington had warned Moscow ahead of time so that Russian soldiers would not be in danger, Moscow's reaction was rather strong. "This man who is now in office in America claimed that he wanted to fight terrorism but today all terrorists in Syria are celebrating the United States attack", he said.

Tillerson: Russia must choose between Assad, US
Tillerson said both countries have agreed that their lines of communications must stay open. The Kremlin previously refused to say whether Putin would meet with Tillerson in Moscow .

Experts said the USA military strike could complicate Tillerson's diplomatic mission to Moscow, and that an escalation of tensions between the US and Russian Federation over the future of Assad also is possible.

At least 86 people died in Tuesday's attack on the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which left hundreds choking, fidgeting or foaming at the mouth.

The decision undercut another campaign promise for Trump: his pledge to try to warm relations with Moscow.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the United States should not have launched its missile strikes.

"Even attractive babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack", he said in an address announcing the news.

Until the chemical weapons attack, Trump mainly saw Syria as a hotbed for terrorists seeking to attack the U.S. He rarely spoke of the hundreds of thousands killed and the millions displaced during the six years of clashes between the Assad government, backed by Russian Federation and Iran, and opposition groups.

"Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent", said Tillerson on Thursday night.

In a statement Saturday, Johnson said his priority was to continue contact with the United States and others in the run-up to a meeting of G-7 foreign ministers in Italy on Monday and Tuesday, with the aim of building "coordinated global support for a ceasefire on the ground and an intensified political process". "He was very interested in understanding better the circumstances of the attack and who was responsible", said national security adviser, Lieutenant-General Herbert R. McMaster.

But the images coming out of Khan Sheikhoun appear to have changed all that.

"We are asking for an impartial worldwide fact-finding body to be set up.to find out where these chemical weapons came from", Rohani said as he condemned the USA missile strikes as an "aggression".

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