Trump to Congress on Syria strike: US to take additional action to further its national interests

US President Donald Trump has sent a letter to the US Congress, informing them about the US missile strike against the Syrian Air Force base, and stating that the US will take additional action to further the country’s national interests, the White House said Saturday.

In a letter to the US Congress on Saturday, President Donald Trump explained his decision to launch an attack on the Shayrat Airbase in Syria, claiming he was acting to avert a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“United States intelligence indicates that Syrian military forces operating from this airfield were responsible for the chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians in southern Idlib Province, Syria, that occurred on April 4,” Trump wrote in the letter.

"I directed this action in order to degrade the Syrian military's ability to conduct further chemical weapons attacks and to dissuade the Syrian regime from using or proliferating chemical weapons, thereby promoting the stability of the region and averting a worsening of the region's current humanitarian catastrophe."

The letter, in which Trump claims to have acted “in the vital national security and foreign policy interests of the United States,” repeats the same justification the president gave earlier this week, when speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort.

The US strike came before the UN or the OPCW, the chemical weapons watchdog, could investigate the incident. Washington hurried to accuse the Syrian government for the suspected chemical attack.

Two days earlier, Trump ordered the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against the airbase from US Navy ships based in the Eastern Mediterranean. The American attack on Shayrat Airbase in Syria killed 14 people including nine innocent civilians, the governor of Homs told RT.