Republican House Speaker John Boehner backs Obama over Syria strikes

THE likelihood of US military strikes against Syria drew closer with the influential Republican House Speaker John Boehner saying he would support President Barack Obama's call for action.

Mr Obama shocked the world on Saturday when he decided to ask Congress for support on military strikes which had then seemed imminent.

Mr Boehner emerged from talks with Obama at the White House on Tuesday saying the US must respond to the use of chemical weapons.

"This is something that the United States as a country needs to do,'' Mr Boehner said, adding that he believed his colleagues should also support Mr Obama's request for authorization to use military force.

"We have enemies around the world that need to understand we are not going to tolerate this type of behavior.

"We also have allies around the world and allies in the region who also need to know America will be there and stand up when necessary.''

Mr Obama told reporters on Tuesday he was confident he could work with Congress to pass a resolution authorizing military intervention.

The president indicated during a meeting with lawmakers at the White House that he's open to changes to his request for congressional authorization for strikes.

House Speaker Republican John Boehner said military strikes were needed to show the US would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons.

Mr Obama said he wants the American people to know, quote, "This is not Iraq, and this is not Afghanistan.'' He said action in Syria will be limited and proportional.

The comments came as Israel's defence ministry said a missile launch in the Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday was part of joint American-Israeli military exercises.

"The Israeli defence ministry and the American MDA (Missile Defence Agency) on Tuesday moing at 9.15 (4.15pm AEST) successfully launched an Ankor-type radar missile," it said in a statement.

"The test was launched from the Mediterranean and directed from an army base in the centre of Israel," it said.
The statement mentioned only one missile.

The Russian news agencies said Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had already reported to President Vladimir Putin about the event.

"The launch was detected by the early waing radar in Armavir," the Interfax news agency quoted the defence ministry as saying.

"The trajectory of the targets in question was from the central part of the Mediterranean Sea towards the easte part of the Mediterranean coastline," it added.

This picture shows a Tomahawk cruise missile launched from a US Navy warship in the Mediterranean. No confirmation has been made on today's missile origin or target. Picture: AFP file

Mr Putin, a vocal critic of the West's policies on Syria, has expressed strong doubt that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was behind an alleged chemical attack on August 21 that has prompted calls for military action.

Mr Obama's decision on Saturday to go to congress lifted the threat last week of immediate strikes on Assad's govement.

Mr Obama indicated a covert effort by the US to arm and train Syrian rebels was beginning to yield results: the first 50-man cell of fighters, who have been trained by the C.I.A., was beginning to sneak into Syria, The New York Times reports.

If the war in Syria suddenly stopped and reconstruction began today, around $73 billion  would be needed to put the country back on track, a study published in Al-Watan newspaper says.

Quoting Syrian real estate expert Ammar Yussef, the report on Tuesday said bombings, fighting and sabotage of infrastructure during the conflict had partially or completely destroyed 1.5 million dwellings.

The daily, which is close to al-Assad's regime, added that reconstruction - if it started now - would involve 10,000 building sites, 15,000 trucks, 10,000 cement mixers and around six million workers.

The work would cost about $73 billion, according to Yussef.

Several bodies being buried during a funeral in a suburb of Damascus, Syria.

More than 110,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict broke out in March 2011, including over 40,100 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

More than two million Syrians have now fled their country, the UNHCR says, as top US officials pressed a robust bid to secure congress' support for military strikes against the Damascus regime.

The UN refugee agency's grim statistics come as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad waed that Weste military action against him risked igniting a regional war and bringing chaos across the Middle East.

The UNHCR, in a statement released in Geneva on Tuesday, lamented that the number of Syrian refugees had increased nearly ten-fold from a year ago.

"Syria is haemorrhaging women, children and men who cross borders often with little more than the clothes on their backs," the statement said, pointing out that on September 3, 2012, it had registered just 230,671 Syrian refugees.

In addition to the two million Syrians living as refugees, some 4.25 million people have been displaced within the devastated country since the conflict began in March 2011, according to UN figures.

"Syria has become the great tragedy of this century," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement, describing the situation in the country as "a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history".

Correspondents and witnesses have reported an even greater exodus of Syrians into neighbouring countries since US President Barack Obama waed last week he was ready to launch military strikes on Assad's regime over its alleged use of chemical weapons.

As part of White House strategy to persuade sceptical lawmakers to back what Obama said would be "limited" and "narrow" action in Syria, the US secretaries of state and defence were to go before a Senate panel on Tuesday.

In what will be one of the most high-profile political set pieces in Washington in weeks, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel will testify to the Senate Foreign Relations committee.

Kerry will argue that failing to act in Syria "unravels the deterrent impact of the inteational norm against chemical weapons use", a senior State Department official said on condition of anonymity.

Inaction also "endangers our friends and our partners along Syria's borders ... and risks emboldening Assad and his key allies - Hezbollah and Iran", the official waed.

France, which backs Obama in his determination to launch a military intervention in Syria, on Monday released an intelligence report which said Assad's forces carried out a "massive" chemical attack last month.

Based on military and foreign intelligence services, the report said the regime launched an attack "combining conventional means with the massive use of chemical agents" on rebel-held areas around the capital Damascus on August 21.

It said that based on videos, French intelligence had counted at least 281 dead, but that reports of up to 1500 killed were consistent with such heavy use of chemical weapons.
"The attack on August 21 could only have been ordered and carried out by the regime," the report said.

Assad, in a rare interview with Weste media released on Monday, waed that Weste military strikes risked setting off a wider conflict in the Middle East.

"We cannot only talk about a Syrian response, but what could happen after the first strike," Assad said.

"Everyone will lose control of the situation once the powder keg explodes. Chaos and extremism will spread. There is a risk of regional war."