‘Get ready Russia’: Trump tweets Syria missile threat

Donald Trump has issued a stark warning to Russia and Syria to “get ready” for a missile attack on the Assad regime.

In what The Daily Telegraph calls an “extraordinary response”, the US president branded Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it”. The US bombs would be “nice and new and ‘smart’”, he added.

The tweet came after Alexander Zasypkin, the Russian envoy to Beirut, said: “If there is an American strike, then we... will shoot down the missiles and target the positions from where they were launched.”

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He warned that there had been an “escalation towards a significant crisis” in recent days.

Zasypkin’s comments, in an interview with a Hizbollah-affiliated TV channel, are the “sternest Russian warning yet against American strikes”, says the Telegraph.

In response, Trump tweeted that America’s relationship with Russia “is worse now than it has ever been, and that includes the Cold War”.

According to The Guardian, the US, UK and France are already making plans for strikes in Syria that are “intended to punish” the Assad regime following a suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians. More than 40 people died in the assault on the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma on Saturday.

Meanwhile, air traffic control agency Eurocontrol has advised commercial airlines flying over the eastern Mediterranean to exercise caution over the next 72 hours. Missiles could disrupt radio navigation equipment, the agency said.