Western airstrikes have done little to degrade Bashar al-Assad’s chemical arsenal and his regime still could inflict major damage, Syria’s former chemical weapons chief has said.

An aid worker has described hearing “deafening explosions” and said the building she was in rattled when allied air strikes struck their Syrian targets.

The little girl stares into the distance while her limbs convulse. She is foaming from the mouth, desperately trying to get air into her tiny lungs. It’s a battle she probably won’t win. The girl doesn’t know why she is dying.

France will today lead a push involving the US and UK for a peaceful path forward in the Syrian crisis, proposing a United Nations-backed ceasefire.

In the wake of recent air strikes on Syria by the United States and its allies, some lawmakers in

WESTERN powers have said their missile attacks on Saturday struck at the heart of Syria’s chemical weapons program, but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to halt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s progress in the 7-year-old civil war.

The United States is “locked and loaded” if Syria uses chemical weapons again, Donald Trump has threatened.

What of the economic consequences of an escalation of war in Syria? I say “escalation”, of course, as civil war has raged across this blighted nation for the last seven years.

Donald Trump, the US president, has thanked Britain and France for the “power of their fine military strike” after the allies responded to a chemical attack in Syria.

This wasn’t the usual sound of light artillery shelling against remaining rebel enclaves in Damascus which you often hear. This was something quite different.