CARACAS, Venezuela - Two people were shot dead as opponents of President Nicolas Maduro flooded the streets of Caracas and other Venezuelan cities Wednesday, battling security forces in what's been dubbed the "mother of all marches" against the embattled socialist leader.
The US has not ruled out additional strikes against the regime should it opt to use chemical weapons in the future.
His comments, aired Wednesday on Fox Business News, come less than a week after Trump ordered a retaliatory strike on Syria based on USA evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad attacked civilians with chemical weapons.
Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on April 6 that he was "100 percent certain" that the attack was "directly ordered and planned by Assad".
Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal to avert USA strikes in September 2013, following a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs in August that year that killed hundreds of people and sparked worldwide outrage. During the six-year conflict, Israel has largely stayed on the sidelines, carrying out occasional air strikes against what it says is the movement of weapons to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militants. But doubts began to emerge soon afterward that not all such armaments or production facilities were declared and destroyed.
"One ton of sarin could easily be used to perpetrate an attack on the scale of the 2013 attack".
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He added ominously, "The world's two foremost nuclear powers can not have this kind of relationship". Trump said in a Fox Business interview this week, "We're not going into Syria".
Reuters quoted the organization's director, General Ahmet Uzumcu as saying that the results of the analysis "indicate that sarin or a sarin like substance was used".
Victims of the suspected chemical weapons attack lie on the ground, in Khan Sheikhoun, in the northern province of Idlib, Syria.
He said in a statement that further results would follow, but that "the analytical results already obtained are incontrovertible".
A fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an worldwide watchdog, is investigating the incident and is expected to issue a report within two weeks.
Turkish and British tests also have concluded that sarin or a substance similar to the deadly nerve agent was used in the Idlib attack.
"The Syrian regime should think long and hard before it again acts so recklessly in violation of global law against the use of chemical weapons", Mattis said, later adding: "If they use chemical weapons, they are going to pay a very, very stiff price".
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