FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
U.S. Missiles Were Shot Down in Syria, Despite Trump’s Claim
April 17, 2018 (EIRNS)—In Hialeah, Florida, President Donald Trump repeated what his military advisors had told him since April 14: that all of the missiles fired overnight by U.S., U.K. and French forces hit their targets in Syria. He went so far as to claim that Syrian and Russian air defenses “didn’t work too well.”
The Russians, however, continue to tell a completely different story than what the Pentagon presented. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a briefing yesterday that the damage at the Barzeh science facility outside Damascus did not correspond with the 30 cruise missiles that the U.S. claimed were launched at it.
“Moreover, the survey of the territory of this and other objects did not reveal either a large number of debris and fragmentations of ammunition, or a corresponding number of impact craters,”
he said. Konashenkov went on to say that the actual U.S.-U.K.-French targets include five airfields, Shayrat among them, none of which were hit, because the attacks were successfully repelled by Syrian air defenses.
Konashenkov listed the Russian anti-aircraft systems employed by the Syrians to repel the attack, including, for the first time, the truck-mounted Pantsir S1 short range anti-aircraft/anti-missile system. The Syrians have 40 Pantsir S1 systems which fired 25 missiles and hit 24 targets. “It is to be stressed that Syrian air defense system was organized on the principle of object defense,” Konashenkov said. “Almost all objects protected by air defense systems repelled the strike.”
