IT began in the early hours of yesterday morning. In the first ever coordinated Western strikes against the Damascus government, US, British and French forces struck Syria with more than 100 missiles.

The airstrikes concentrated on what they called chemical weapons sites in retaliation for a poison gas attack on the Syrian town of Douma last weekend which killed dozens of civilians. Syria and its ally Russia have denied such an attack took place, and Moscow has accused Britain of helping to stage the Douma incident to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.

While Prime Minister Theresa May described yesterday’s strikes as “limited and targeted”, and said they were not about intervening in Syria’s civil conflict, US President Donald Trump announced the military action from the White House, saying the three allies had “marshalled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality”.

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French President Emmanuel Macron meanwhile said the strikes had been launched against the Syrian government’s “clandestine chemical arsenal,” and so far had only been limited to these installations.

The air strikes came just before the global chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), was due to deploy a team to assess last week’s suspected gas attack. Yesterday’s strikes took place before the inspectors had a chance to gather evidence at the scene and have now put that investigation in jeopardy

Pentagon officials confirmed that normal deconfliction channels with Russia were used before the strikes but that the Russians were not notified of target sites in advance and they did not attempt to intervene in the attacks, as had been expected.

French Defence Minister, Florence Parly, also confirmed that the Russians “were warned beforehand” to avoid inadvertent escalation.

The targets included a Syrian centre in the greater Damascus area for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weaponry as well as a chemical weapons storage facility near the city of Homs. A third target, also near Homs, contained both a chemical weapons equipment storage facility and a command post.

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But independent open-source intelligence sites like the US-based Stratfor group indicated that the strikes went far beyond chemical weapons installations only.

According to Stratfor, additional attacks were reported against the Mezzeh airfield, a major Syrian Republican Guard helicopter and air base and one of the installations linked to the government’s ongoing operation targeting rebels in Eastern Ghouta.

Jamal Siba’i who lives near the Mezzeh military air base, which may have fired an air defence system at the incoming missiles, said that his household was “woken up around 5am by very loud sounds.”

There were also reported strikes on the Jabal Qassioun mountain range overlooking Damascus, an area said to be replete with army headquarters and artillery positions that supported the Syrian Army’s Eastern Ghouta campaign.

“The target set was significantly expanded from the 2017 strike on the Shayrat airbase which hit more than half a dozen targets, including air bases and chemical weapons sites,” Stratfor analysts said.

“This indicates that the scope of the current operation is beyond a punitive strike, extending into a concreted effort to severely degrade the Syrian government’s ability to manufacture and use chemical weapons,” Stratfor concluded.

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Unverified reports also cite a pro-Syrian government militia commander as saying that other locations were hit. Among them a military base in the Dimas area close to Damascus, army depots in the eastern Qalamoun, as well as the Kiswah area eight miles south of Damascus where Iran is believed to have been building a military base.

As the airstrikes got underway a Reuters news agency eyewitness confirmed at least six loud explosions were heard in Damascus itself and smoke was seen rising over the city. A second witness said the Barzah district of Damascus had been hit in the strikes. Barzah is the location of a major Syrian scientific research centre.

The Syrian military reported that the US, UK and France fired 110 missiles during the joint attack. Syrian state TV said Syrian forces had downed 13 incoming missiles, and showed calm scenes in the Damascus morning. “Our air defences effectively shot down most of them,” claimed Brigadier General Ali Mayhoub.

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Khaled al-Abboud, a Syrian MP, said the strikes had little impact. “Some might say that the attacks inflicted fear in the hearts of the people in Syria. Some people were afraid, yes, because of the loud noises,” said Mr Abboud. “But were the attacks able to damage the structure of the Syrian state?”

None of the strikes hit zones where Russian air defence systems protect the Russian bases of Tartus and Hmeimim, Russian news agencies cited the Ministry of Defence as saying.

A US official said that Tomahawk cruise missiles were used against multiple locations in the strikes. US Secretary of Defence James Mattis also said the scale of the strikes was about “double” what was launched in April 2017 after a chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 people.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) meanwhile confirmed that Storm Shadow missiles had been launched by four RAF Tornados at a former Syrian missile base 15 miles west of Homs, where it is thought President Bashar al-Assad's regime has been stockpiling items used to make chemical weapons.

A MoD spokesperson added the facility was “located some distance from any known concentrations of civilian habitation”, and scientific analysis was used to “minimise any risks of contamination to the surrounding area”.

It was also said that the RAF warplanes fired their missiles well away from Syrian airspace, out of range of the regime's air defences, and that they all returned safely. After loud explosions and flashes lit up the night sky over Damascus, by yesterday morning Syrians were crowding on to the capital’s streets in noisy demonstrations of defiance at the same time as their Russian ally denounced the attack.

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Russian president Vladimir Putin condemned the air strikes “in the most serious terms”, saying it had violated the principles of international law and constituted “an act of aggression against a sovereign state that is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism”.

However, in contrast to threats made by a senior Russian military official last month and several Russian officials over the past week, Putin made no mention of the possibility that Russian forces could strike back at the US military.

His reluctance to talk of retaliatory action was no doubt influenced by Russian embassy officials in Damascus who confirmed they had no information on any Russians harmed in the attack.

Such a scenario has always been what the Moscow Defence Ministry has called the red line over which it might be provoked into a military response, possibly against the planes and ships that launched the attack.

While the limited scope of the targets disappointed some Washington hawks who were hoping that US intervention would signal a wider effort to combat Iran and Russia’s influence over Syria, events have still to fully run their course.

The latest developments too have yet again exposed the ambivalent nature of Washington’s involvement in Syria. It was barely two weeks ago that President Trump in a speech in Ohio said that the US would “be coming out of Syria like very soon.”

Now, Trump has presided over a large-scale bombing operation aimed at several targets in Syria, raising the question of what comes next?

Is it that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad must go, or is there simply just a red line on Assad's use of chemical weapons, but not much more? Then there is the question of whether yesterday’s strikes mark some kind of turning point between Trump and Russia?

For all of Trump’s tough talking last week, the strategy he has chosen though risky remains limited in its reach and impact.

Yesterday’s one-night burst of ordnance appears unlikely to change the overall balance of forces in Syria seven years into its bloody civil war. Meanwhile, other military players in the region, Israel, Turkey, Iran Saudi Arabia and their proxies, as well as jihadist groups, may now use the opportunity to advance their own interests on the ground in Syria.

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Most analysts are of the view that the limited nature of the strike probably would not compel Russia or Iran into taking significant action. If there is retaliatory action taken by Moscow it will most likely take the form of some kind of hybrid warfare, a deniable action such as a cyber attack rather than open conflict.

That very point was made on Friday in the New York Times by Dennis Ross, a longtime Middle East expert who has worked for several presidents and is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“The Russian and Iranian responses will likely be shrill rhetorically, but direct responses are unlikely,” concluded Ross.

“The targets struck were tied to CW infrastructure,” he added, meaning chemical weapons, “and not the bases where the Russians and Iranians are.”

US Defence Secretary James Mattis was at pains yesterday to stress that the latest air strikes against Syria were a “one-time shot” for now.

Few doubt though that should the al-Assad regime again resort to the use of chemical weapons, more US-led airstrikes will inevitably follow. Should that occur then the war in Syria would seem destined to move into yet another even more dangerous phase.