WASHINGTON—U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government of going “beyond a red line” with a poison gas attack on civilians, but he declined to spell out how or whether his administration would respond.
In his first extensive remarks on the issue, Trump acknowledged at a joint news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah that he now had responsibility for Syria policy and said his views of Assad had changed.
“It crossed a lot of lines for me,” Trump said of the attack, which he described as an affront to humanity. “That crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line,” he said.
Western countries, including the United States, have blamed Assad’s armed forces for the worst chemical attack in Syria for more than four years. The attack killed at least 70 people, many of them children. The Syrian military has denied responsibility.
Trump did not mention Russia, which asserted on Wednesday that Syrian rebels were to blame for the gas attack, a charge U.S. officials dismissed. Russia has been a military backer of Assad in the country’s six-year-old civil war.
Trump has criticized his predecessor, Barack Obama, for not following through on his threat to intervene if chemical weapons were used in Syria, but he encouraged the Democratic president at the time not to take action in the war-ravaged country.
