Russian FM: airstrikes in Syria "illegal" and "unacceptable"

(14 Apr 2018) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday called the Western-led airstrikes on Syria "illegal" and "unacceptable". The US, Britain and France said they launched Saturday's strike to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad for a suspected chemical attack against civilians in the town of Douma outside Damascus. Opposition leaders and rescuers say more than 40 people, including many women and children, died in the suspected chemical attack. Speaking in Moscow, the Russian foreign minister also said he had received a document from a Swiss laboratory that analyzed the samples in the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy, which points at a Western-designed nerve agent as a likely cause. Lavrov said Moscow received the confidential information from the laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland, that analyzed samples from the site of the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury on March 4. He said made the research at request from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The OPCW's report confirmed British findings that the Skripal were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, but didn't say who was responsible for the poisoning. Britain accused Russia of poisoning them with a Soviet-designed agent, the accusations Moscow fervently denied. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...