The pretext used to carry out a strike on Syria was clearly a fraud, US State Senator from Virginia Richard Black said in an interview following the April 14 airstrike.
“Syrians wouldn’t possibly use gas, since terrorists were quickly surrendering,” Black said on Friday after the airstrikes. “Syria certainly wouldn’t gas civilians and leave soldiers untouched. It was an obvious hoax.”
Earlier in the day, the United States, the United Kingdom and France launched strikes on a number of targets in Syria in response to the alleged chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma.
Before the strike, the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons Fact-Finding Mission expressed its intentions to start its investigation into the alleged chemical attack in Douma amid calls by some Western countries for a response to the incident.
The Russian military said earlier that it had substantial and convincing evidence confirming that the April 7 chemical attack in Douma was a provocation staged with the direct involvement of the United Kingdom. Russia’s State Duma Foreign Relations Committee deputy chairman Alexei Chepa also noted that if OPCW specialists reached Douma and confirmed information by Russian specialists that no chemical weapons attack has happened in Syria, this would have robbed the US of its justification for initiating new hostilities.