Trump On Syria Chemical Attack: President Says That Syria Is Now His Responsibility

After the Syria chemical attack Tuesday that killed more than 70 people, including children, a statement released by the White House Tuesday focussed on the wrongdoings of the Obama administration with its Syrian policy, instead of what the current administration will do in the matter.

Following the issuing of the statement, GOP foreign-policy leaders had expressed their concern about Trump's handling of the Syrian attack issue. In an interview with local radio AM Tampa Bay, Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, put the blame on the Trump administration for the Syria chemical attack. He said that it cannot be a coincidence that the chemical weapons attack in Syria took place few days after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad could remain in power.

Read: Russia Blames Syria For Deadly Chemical Attack

How Trump will react to the Syria crisis is now being viewed as his first major foreign policy test. On Wednesday, during a joint press conference in the Rose Garden, White House, with Jordan's King Abdullah, Trump said that the chemical attack "crossed a lot of lines for me" and changed the way he viewed Syria and leader Bashar al-Assad. He said: "I now have responsibility, and I will have that responsibility and carry it very proudly," Trump said responding to a question about a White House statement Tuesday that blamed the attack in part on President Barack Obama." He added: "It is now my responsibility. It was a great opportunity missed." The president called the incident "horrific" and said that the deaths of many innocent babies, children and women were an assault on the humanity.

As speculations are rife about what Trump's next step in the Syria crisis will be. One option would be to order surgical strikes on regime air bases using surface to air missiles, defence sources said. Trump would avoid a full-fledged war as he has been a regular critic of the long and costly U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last decade, the Telegraph reported.

Meanwhile, autopsy results have revealed that chemical weapons were used in Tuesday's attack, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters Thursday. Out of the hundreds wounded, thirty-two victims had been brought to Turkey and three have subsequently died, Reuters reported.