Turkey says US strikes ‘cosmetic’ if Assad stays in power

Turkey has said that the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian air base will be seen as a 'cosmetic intervention’ unless President Bashar Assad is removed from power. Meanwhile, the Syrian leader’s strong ally Iran has called for the formation of an international fact-finding committee to investigate the chemical weapons attack in a northern Syrian town that killed scores of people and trigged the American strike. The statements by Assad’s opponents and backers came as warplanes struck the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, where the chemical attack killed 87 people earlier this week. The air raid killed a woman and wounded her son, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees.

Neutral countries should come and assess to make it clear where the chemical weapons came from.

Iranian president Hassan Rohani