President Donald Trump has reportedly made the decision to bomb Syria Friday evening, according to U.S. administration officials who spoke to Pentagon correspondent Joe Tabet.
"US administration official confirmed to me that a decision to strike #Syria has been taken," he tweeted.
Vice President Mike Pence is in South America for the conference Trump was scheduled to attend. He was scheduled to stay at the event for another several hours but was rushed out of the event suddenly, according to pool reports.
"The press pool had to leave the press filing center earlier than expected, running to the vans as quickly as we could. At 7:22pm, the press vans started rolling. We lost the motorcade and are rushing to catch up," press pool reported.
The New York Times reported that President Trump will be making a statement about Syria on Friday evening.
Daily Caller writer Benny Johnson tweeted one of his sources with direct knowledge of Trump's decision said, "We’re gonna bomb the sh*t out of Syria.”
In his statement to the press, Trump said that the "precision strike" is a joint military action with France and the United Kingdom. "Hopefully some day we will get along with Russia and maybe even Iran but maybe not." Instead, Trump urged Russia not to continue traveling down the "dark road."
The speech marked the first time in over a year that Trump called Bashar al Assad a "criminal."
“We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use” of chemical weapons, Trump said.
You can watch the president's speech here.
According to the DEFCONWarningSystem Twitter account, they got "reports of explosions in the Syrian capital of Damascus. HOWEVER [sic], there is nothing visible on live feed webcams we are monitoring in the region. Classifying as unconfirmed rumor for now."
You can see a map of key ares in the country from AFP below:
