Hinting at a military response, Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday accused Syria of using chemical weapons against its people and destroying the evidence, and said President Barack Obama believes “there must be accountability.”
Kerry, using forceful language in a brief statement to reporters, said images that have emerged from Syria in the past week — entire families killed without shedding a drop of blood, bodies contorting in spasms — “shock the conscience of the world.”
He said the evidence was “undeniable” that the Syrian regime had used chemical agents. And he said the president feels there must be accountability for those who use “the world’s most heinous weapons.”
The secretary spoke hours after a United Nations team trying to look into claims of a poison gas attack in a Syrian suburb was turned back by sniper fire. At the podium in Washington, Kerry spoke in pained personal terms, as a father, of watching and rewatching video of the aftermath of chemical attacks.
“Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny,” he said.
The administration won preliminary support from members of Congress to wage strikes against the Assad regime, though lawmakers differed over the breadth of the attacks that the U.S. and its allies should wage.
“I do think action is going to occur,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on TODAY.
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