US missile strike on a military base in Syria has hindered the effort to reach a political settlement, and possibly, this has been done on purpose, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after talks with his Senegalese counterpart Mankeur Ndiaye on Monday.
The sides discussed the growing terrorist threat on the African continent and in the world in general, Lavrov said. “We again stated the need to consolidate efforts of the entire international community in the fight against this universal evil, as Russian President Vladimir Putin said some 18 months ago addressing the UN General Assembly,” he said.
Lavrov stressed that all steps here should be conducted on the basis of the international law and the United Nations Charter.
“In this context, we discussed the illegal and aggressive steps of US aviation when the strikes on an airbase in Syria were carried out, which only exacerbated the situation and hindered, maybe on purpose, the search for political settlement,” Lavrov said.
On April 7, the US military fired a total of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from its warships in the Mediterranean Sea on Syria’s Al Shayrat air base located in the country’s province of Homs. The US attack on the Syrian government forces reportedly came in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria’s Idlib on April 4.
According to data from the Russian Defense Ministry, Syrian warplanes delivered an air strike on April 4 that hit workshops where terrorists were producing munitions with chemical agents supplied to Iraq and used in Aleppo. However, Washington concluded that Damascus had used chemical weapons.