Blaming Assad, Trump says Syria attack 'cannot be tolerated'

WASHINGTON (AP) — Decrying an "affront to humanity," President Donald Trump today declared a chemical weapons attack in Syria "cannot be tolerated" but did not say what the U.S. might do in response.

He blamed the attack squarely on Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Trump, speaking alongside Jordan's King Abdullah II in the Rose Garden, offered no details about what steps the U.S. might take in response, even as his U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, was promising a strong and perhaps even unilateral response.

But Trump said the attack was "so horrific" and noted that it had killed "innocent people, small children and even beautiful little babies."

"These heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated," Trump said.

He said the U.S. stood with its global allies "to condemn this horrific attack."

The U.S. and Russia were trading conflicting assertions today about who launched a chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed 72 people, as world leaders grasped for a response to the latest atrocity in Syria's intractable civil war.

As Trump stood by his charge that Assad's forces were responsible, Russia disagreed. The staunch Assad ally insisted the chemicals were dispersed when Syrian warplanes bombed a facility where rebels were building chemical weapons.

At the United Nations, Trump's envoy threatened unilateral U.S. action if the world body failed to act.

"When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action," Haley declared. She addressed an emergency meeting of the Security Council, which was weighing a resolution condemning chemical weapons use in Syria. Russia, which has veto power, is opposed.