Syrian town devastated by chemical attack attacked again by warplanes

BEIRUT - Residents of the Syrian town devastated by a chemical-weapons attack last week said that warplanes had returned to bomb them Saturday as Turkey described a retaliatory U.S. assault as 'cosmetic” unless it removed President Bashar Assad from power.

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

Eyewitnesses said Saturday that fresh airstrikes on the area - now a ghost town - had killed one woman and wounded several others. Photographs from the site showed a pair of green slippers, abandoned by a blood-spattered doorway.

The U.S. military launched 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield early Friday in the first direct American assault on Assad's government since that country's six-year civil war began. Although American officials have predicted that the strikes would result in a major shift of Assad's calculus, they appeared to be symbolic in practice.

Within 24 hours of the American strikes, monitoring groups reported that jets were taking off from the bombed Shayrat air base once again.

'Those attacks did not reduce the regime's ability kill civilians. They can still commit massacres at any time,” said Abdulrzzak Khattab, a resident who said his house was damaged in Saturday's attack.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu described President Donald Trump's decision to retaliate for the chemical attack as welcome, but not enough.

'If this intervention is limited only to an air base, if it does not continue and if we don't remove the regime from heading Syria, then this would remain a cosmetic intervention,” said Cavusoglu.

Turkey, a key backer of the Syrian opposition, has thrown its weight behind a stuttering peace process in the Kazakh capital, Astana, which it hopes will pave a way for a political solution to Syria's devastating war.

Assad's most influential supporter, Iran, rallied around the Syrian government on Saturday, calling for an investigation into the chemical attack that is not led by American officials.

Despite widespread consensus that the chemical attack was carried out by the Syrian government, most likely using the banned nerve agent Sarin, Iran and Russia have defended the record of its ally in Damascus.

In a statement carried by Iranian state television, President Hassan Rouhani called Saturday for the formation of an international fact-finding committee that 'must not be headed by Americans.”

The Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, a global watchdog, said Thursday that it had initiated contact with the Syrian government, and that it was investigating the attack on Khan Sheikhoun.

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Zakaria reported from Gaziantep, Turkey.