Facebook’s CEO has left many Pakistanis wondering how the social media site could influence the country’s upcoming general elections — what kind of data could be accessed, exploited and by whom.

During his two-day congressional hearing on an information breach by data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica, which was affiliated with US President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, Mark Zuckerberg said that fake accounts on Facebook could have an impact on Pakistan’s elections.

The 33-year-old Internet mogul said he feared bogus accounts “may disturb the transparency of the electoral process in the country”.

While talking to Dawn, a social media activist claimed that there was nothing new or shocking in the Facebook CEO’s statements.

“The US is years behind us. We have a much more sophisticated pattern. He’s whitewashed everything with big words — basically this is all about trolling,” he said.

“When the Facebook CEO talks about fake accounts and the data breach, he doesn’t mean someone is going to hack into your account and use your data — what this means is that fake accounts will be set up to sway the mind of the public and this has been going on in Pakistan for years.

“Look at Maryam Nawaz’s Twitter account, look at how party tweets go viral. People of all ages use social media — they are interested in what Mian sb did or where he’s buying clothes from, this helps develop their image of the man and thus his party and their candidate,” he explained.

Digital Rights Foundation’s Nighat Dad agreed with this point of view, saying: “Facebook, to a lot of people in Pakistan, is the internet and an only option to experience online spaces.

“So when they see something on Facebook without having the knowledge of an alternate narrative, they start believing what they see. So it’s important that Facebook builds strong mechanisms around countering false news on its platform.”

Controlling your data

Mr Zuckerberg claimed that right now the social media company’s top priority was to “protect the integrity of the upcoming elections in Brazil, India, Pakistan and other countries”.

Explaining how this would be done, Mr Zuckerberg said that Facebook, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, would identify and remove fake accounts seeking to interfere in elections and spread misinformation.

He said the social network was deploying artificial intelligence tools to identify bogus accounts. He also revealed that Facebook, which had more than 30 million users in Pakistan in 2016, would be hiring over 20,000 new employees to ensure security and personal privacy.

Discussing why would it be easy to mine this kind of information in Pakistan, Sadaf Baig from Media Matters for Democracy, a not-for-profit working to defend freedom of expression, media, internet, and communications in the country, said that there were no data protection laws in the country.

“There is no provision for this in the cybercrime law either — your data is being used by telecommunication companies and companies like Facebook… the government is failing to protect our data,” she said, adding that this data can also include information available with the National Database and Registration Authority and can be sold without people’s knowledge.

What this means

“On the one hand you have people creating technology who don’t understand social and political implications and on the other, politicians who don’t understand technology… this disconnect is ideal ground for companies like Cambridge Analytica and individuals like Steve Bannon to come in and exploit,” said Rahma Mian who teaches politics of technology at Habib University.

Talking to Dawn, she said what is important here is what this case represents about politics and citizens’ rights today and where it is headed. Cambridge Analytica’s role in Brexit and US elections is really just the tip of the iceberg.

She said that compared to Pakistan, these countries have robust civil liberties frameworks and laws that protect privacy and data, yet despite that, something on this scale has not only happened but was pretty much not mainstream news for two years.

“In Pakistan, we may not have the exact same scenario unfold due to our particular history and electoral politics — in a bizarre twist our dysfunctional political system is actually helping us — but what can and is happening is that our data is being collected by the state and by these tech companies without any protection in place,” she said.

“This is definitely deeply frightening — but what is even scarier is how ill-prepared our politicians and bureaucrats are at handling not only our data which is basically equivalent to currency and freedom today but the rapidly changing technology policy landscape,” she added.

Unlike smartphone addicts who spend hours a day on social media, playing games or watching videos, residents of Basan village are using smartphones to save lives and local incomes.

The safety alerts about wild Asian elephants they spread help prevent injuries and economic losses that can be caused by the roaming rainforest giants.

The village, in the Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture of southwestern China’s Yunnan province, has witnessed frequent visits by wild Asian elephants in recent years as their numbers have grown. The giant animals, searching for food, sometimes pose a threat to safety.

“Nearly all families in the village had their crops damaged by wild elephants nearby,” said villager Huang Zhaowu. “Some were eaten while other crops were trampled. Nothing is left in the farmland, just like a hurricane has swept through it. To a local family, it means the loss of a whole season’s income.”

Even more annoying, the elephants sometimes break into villagers’ houses at night.

“Some people live in bamboo houses without a steel or wooden door that can be used as a defense,” Huang said. “It’s not funny if you are awoken by a wild elephant. They are capable of killing, very easily.”

The villagers’ options for dealing with the safety threat are limited because the wild Asian elephant is listed as one of China’s top-level protected wild animals due to its limited population－an estimated 300－all living in Yunnan.

Huang said some farmers used to broadcast loud music to drive the elephants away. “It worked in the beginning, but soon became nonthreatening to the elephants,” he said. “Then they stomped on all our sound equipment.”

An elephant alert alliance was later formed voluntarily in the village. Through text messages, phone calls and social media such as WeChat, a report system has been established. Anyone who notices a wild elephant nearby will spread the alert.

“Tourists are eager to see wild elephants, but we want them to stay in their territory and keep away from us,” Huang said.

Rarer than giant pandas

The area inhabited by wild Asian elephants in the province has expanded from seven counties in 2017 to eight this year, according to Chen Mingyong, a life sciences professor at Yunnan University who has been studying the animals for decades.

He said the wild Asian elephant population has grown by two to three animals a year in recent years.

Statistics from the provincial forestry department show the wild elephant population in the province－mostly in Xishuangbanna－has soared from 170 in the 1970s to about 300 now thanks to protection efforts.

That means they are still rarer than giant pandas, but the growing population has resulted in more conflicts between people and elephants.

In 2014, a villager in Basan died after being attacked by a wild elephant searching for food. In 2016, a sexually frustrated bull elephant smashed 19 cars in three days. Five months ago, a 67-year-old tourist from Sichuan suffered broken ribs and a broken right hip bone when he was attacked by a wild elephant in Xishuangbanna.

Statistics from the prefecture’s forestry bureau indicate that more than 85 per cent of the 153,000 confrontations between humans and wild animals in Xishuangbanna between 1991 and 2010 involved wild Asian elephants. A total of 33 people died and 165 were injured in such confrontations.

A lack of food is the root of the problem. Guo Xianming, deputy director of the research institute at Xishuangbanna Natural Reserve, said an adult Asian elephant usually weighs between 3 and 5 metric tons and consumes 150 to 200 kilograms of food a day. The growing population has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the herds’ demand for food.

The expansion of some invasive plants has made growing conditions more difficult for the elephants’ preferred food, and scientists say decades of rainforest protection efforts are another factor.

“Protection of rainforest resulted in rapid growth of plants, especially those big trees that used to be threatened by excessive tree felling,” said Wang Lifan, director of Xishuangbanna Natural Reserve’s Shangyong section. “The efforts are crucial to the better recovery of rainforest, but might also lead to problems with the wild elephants’ natural food supply.”

The section, covering 31,300 hectares, is the third largest in the natural reserve. Established in the 1980s, it is now home to 70 to 90 wild elephants.

“A number of the elephants’ favourite foods, such as bamboo, plume grass and plantain, are declining dramatically,” Wang said. “They are much shorter than trees and the protection of the rainforest allows trees to grow rapidly and become a shelter, stopping the sun’s rays those shorter plants need.”

‘Canteens’ for wildlife

To ease the tension, the provincial forestry department has built “canteens” in several natural reserves, reducing friction between villagers and wild elephants that had been eating their crops. In recent years, some of the canteens have been expanded.

In Xishuangbanna Natural Reserve’s Mengyang section, the canteen set up in 2008 has since doubled in size to 67 hectares, Guo said.

In the first two months of this year, 12 cameras shot more than 12,000 pictures and nearly 1,300 videos showing wild Asian elephants, sambar deer and boar feeding at the canteen.

“It shows the canteen is welcomed by the elephants,” Guo said. “After we provided the food source, the elephants paid many fewer visits to farmland, and their conflicts with farmers have been eased in recent years.”

However, with investigations conducted by scientists indicating local people sometimes also feed elephants with crops grown in villages, such as corn, Yunnan University professor Chen said he worries the canteens may teach the elephants to want more of it.

“And their affection for this sweet-tasting crop will encourage more elephants to step into humans’ territory,” he said.

Chen said the most practical way to maintain harmony between elephants and humans is to separate human territory from the elephants’ habitat.

With investment of more than 1 million yuan ($159,000), the country’s first protective fence to separate people and wild elephants was built last year in Xiangyanqing village, Xishuangbanna.

The green, steel fence, 2.2 metres high and 800 metres in length, surrounds the village, which used to be visited by elephants about 40 times a year. It has proved to be effective and another fence, 550 metres long, is now under construction in another village in the prefecture.

Funding needed

But Chen is still trying to figure out other methods that could encourage elephants to stay within a certain region, far from the villages.

Through years of observation, he discovered an elephant secret－they usually spend several months a year near a source of salt, which could be a rock or a small pool with a high salt content.

“We could build some artificial salt source far from the village,” he said. “It won’t hurt either villagers or elephants and will encourage the elephants to stay in the deep forest.”

Drones that used to monitor forest fires have also been introduced to the wild elephant alert system since 2016, according to Chang Zongbo, a media officer from Xishuangbanna’s forestry public security office. He said drones are sometimes used around the clock for real-time monitoring of all 18 elephants in Menghai county, using infrared cameras at night, and that sections of road will be cordoned off if elephants are found there.

“The biggest obstacle in solving conflicts between humans and wild elephants is the lack of scientific research funding,” Chen said. Compared with some overseas research projects on big, wild animals that cost millions of dollars, he said scientific research on wild elephants in Yunnan had only received about 2 million yuan in government funding in the past decade.

“Government funds are mainly used as compensation for the losses of farmers during elephant encounters,” he said. “But that can’t solve the problem fundamentally.

“If more funding can be given to research programmes, things will be different. Scientists would figure out effective and natural methods to ease tension by knowing more about this wild, giant species.”

Rides and goods featuring Disney characters have attracted a wide range of popularity, with the number of accumulated visitors to the Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture-based theme park, as well as the adjacent Tokyo DisneySea, reaching 720 million. The number of foreign visitors has also been increasing recently, and it has been a challenge for Disneyland to ease congestion.

The park opened in April 1983, with the number of visitors reaching 10 million in fiscal 1984. The park added new attractions and shows one after another and annual visitors to the park, combined with DisneySea, marked a record high 31.37 million in fiscal 2014. In recent years, visitors from China and the Southeast Asia region have been rapidly increasing.

However, congestion has become severe and wait times of two hours to three hours have become the norm at popular attractions on holidays.

In 2000, the park introduced the Fastpass system in which a visitor is given a specific time for entry for some attractions, and has also started showing wait times on the internet. But congestion has still not eased.

Project teams to gather information on the rich have been established at regional bureaus nationwide, and the number of designated officials is also rising.

Authorities were prompted to take action out of concern that more and more citizens would believe the taxation system is unfair if it fails to properly tax the wealthy, who are typically more adept at tax planning.

“Tax authorities pointed out overseas bank accounts my client and I weren’t aware of,” a tax accountant said when recalling an inspection last autumn on the president of an information technology company who lives in Minato Ward, Tokyo. “That made me realize how serious they were.”

Prior to the inspection, the client provided the accountant — who belongs to a leading tax accountant corporation in Tokyo that has many wealthy clients — with such details as the balance of his bank accounts at home and abroad and how much he received in interest and dividends from overseas investments.

However, Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau inspectors pointed out extra details such as companies the client has invested in and bank accounts he had virtually forgotten about.

The president was eventually deemed to have failed to declare revenue of several million yen, and agreed to file revised tax returns.

In July 2014, the National Tax Agency set up teams targeting the rich at its three regional bureaus in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.

Wealthy people have a substantial amount of assets in Japan and abroad, and often consult with accountants and other experts to take complicated steps to reduce their tax payments.

One of the project teams is based on the eighth floor of the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau in Tsukiji, Tokyo.

Experienced officials in their 30s and 40s, who also have extensive knowledge about international tax affairs, are gathering information on the wealthy.

They treat these taxpayers, their family members and related companies as a group and analyze their assets and investment activities.

According to estimates by Nomura Research Institute Ltd., there are nearly 1.22 million households in Japan with financial assets of ¥100 million, accounting for 2.3 percent of the total.

Among those, about 73,000 households, or 0.13 percent of all households, belong to a super-rich class, with financial assets of at least ¥500 million.

Project teams at all of the agency’s 12 regional offices nationwide have been set up since July last year.

The agency has also increased the number of officials in the teams from about 50 to about 200.

These measures have been taken amid increasing public scrutiny of wealthy people’s excessive tax planning — as shown in the Panama Papers scandal that shed light on offshore tax havens.

Regional taxation bureaus nationwide conducted 4,188 income tax inspections on the wealthy in fiscal 2016, revealing about ¥44.1 billion in undeclared income.

The average tax penalty stood at ¥3.04 million per case — almost double the overall average of ¥1.54 million.

Individual inspections have typically not been made public. But the Osaka Regional Taxation Bureau’s project team pointed out that in fiscal 2015, a relative of the founder of Keyence Corp., a leading electronics maker based in Osaka, failed to declare donation taxes of ¥150 billion on stocks of an asset management company donated by the founder.

The bureau reportedly charged the relative a penalty of about ¥30 billion.

WHILE THE air strikes on Syria’s chemical weapons facilities would have a limited impact on the Thai stock market, the overall economy and other national interests, Thailand’s national security agency said yesterday that the country was on alert to prevent other, unexpected consequences.

The United States and its French and British allies launched one-off strikes at three alleged chemical weapons facilities in Syria early on Saturday, after which President Donald Trump announced “mission accomplished” without any civilian casualties.

The strikes neither seriously damaged the facilities – they had reportedly been evacuated beforehand – nor posed a threat to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

While the United Nations has vowed to conduct an investigation into Assad’s alleged chemical attacks in Syria, which reportedly killed more than 40 people, Trump threatened that the allies’ attack would be renewed if the regime continued to gas its own people.

The western strikes, however, have created a rift among the superpowers with Russia, a long-time backer of the Assad regime, expressing its unreserved anger. As the one superpower directly involved in the situation, there are likely to be widespread implications on the region and, indeed, the world, said Wanlop Raksanoh, secretary-general of the National Security Council (NSC).

The NSC is optimistic that the situation will not escalate, he said, other than exerting some pressure on the oil price. While Thailand disagreed with the use of chemical weapons, the government wants all parties involved in the dispute to exercise restraint, Wanlop said.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has not yet announced any special measures following the escalation of hostilities, he said, but he noted that Thailand would consider the matter in accordance with international law as a member of the UN.

Regarding the economy, experts said yesterday that the air strike on Syria would have a limited impact on the stock market and the Thai economy, which is estimated to grow slightly over 4 per cent this year, but that oil prices may rise in the short term.

Kobsak Pootrakool, a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, expected a minimal impact on Thailand’s financial markets. Bourses around the world will reopen after the weekend today but the Stock Exchange of Thailand remains closed for Songkran.

If other markets do not fall much today it would augur well when trading on the SET resumes tomorrow, he said.

Looking at other possible risks to the economy, Kobsak said that geopolitical tensions in many parts of the world would continue to pose risks to the global economy, as well as to Thailand’s. While heightening regional political tensions have started to shake many people’s confidence, Kobsak was not fearful. “Although there are many uncertainties, the Thai economy will grow slightly above 4 per cent,” he said.

Anusorn Tamajai, dean of Rangsit University’s Economics Faculty, said one immediate impact of the air strikes on Syria was likely to be an increase in crude oil prices. Thailand heavily depends on oil imports.

“If the conflict escalates it will adversely impact the global economy and Thailand’s exports in the second half of this year,” said Anusorn.

Kobsidthi Silpachai, head of capital markets research at Kasikornbank, said the trade war between the United States and China may be more serious than the air strikes.

“On Syria, the markets would get panicky if Iran were implicated – that would send signal of a potential oil supply shock,” said Kobsidthi.

Prinn Panitchpakdi, managing director of CLSA Securities Thailand, did not foresee a great impact on the markets because there had been a muted response by Russia and Iran, Syria’s main allies, and no retaliatory action. “Maybe tension on the geopolitical front would cause the oil price to rise further in the short term,” he added. Meanwhile, major concerns have been raised over possible further harm to civilians in Syria.

Raed Jarrar, advocacy director for Middle East North Africa at Amnesty International USA, said the Syrian people had already endured six years of devastating attacks, including chemical attacks, many of which amounted to war crimes.

All precautions must be taken to minimise the harm to civilians from any military action, he said, and people already living in fear of losing their lives from unlawful attacks must not be further punished for the alleged violations of the Syrian government

The Thai Foreign Ministry earlier warned Thai nationals in Israel, notably in the Golan Heights, which borders Syria, to closely monitor the situation and follow advice from local authorities.

The annual water festival, known as Thingyan, is marked with large groups of people congregating to celebrate by splashing water and throwing powder at each others faces as a symbolic sign of cleansing and washing away the sins from the old year to mark the traditional New Year in countries such as Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. This year, the Myanmar Thingyan water festival falls on 13 April and ends on 16 April.

EPA-EFE PHOTO

EPA-EFE PHOTO

US, French and British missiles destroyed sites suspected of hosting chemical arms development and storage facilities but the buildings were mostly empty and the Western trio swiftly reverted to its diplomatic efforts.

A damage assessment graphic appears behind Joint Staff director Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. as he speaks to the media about the US-led bombing campaign against Syria inside the Pentagon briefing room in Arlington, Virginia, USA, 14 April 2018. The US, France, and Britain launched strikes against Syria early Saturday morning in response to Syria’s suspected chemical weapons attack. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

Washington trumpeted the total success of the biggest international attack on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime but both Damascus and Syria’s opposition rubbished its impact.

A team of chemical experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague, arrived in Damascus hours after the strikes.

They have been tasked with investigating the site of an April 7 attack in the town of Douma, just east of the capital Damascus, which Western powers said involved chlorine and sarin and killed dozens.

“The fact-finding team arrived in Damascus on Saturday and is due to go to Douma on Sunday,” Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Ayman Soussan told AFP.

“We will ensure they can work professionally, objectively, impartially and free of any pressure,” he said, adding he was confident the experts would prove chemical weapons were never used.

The OPCW itself had declared that the Syrian government’s chemical weapons stockpile had been removed in 2014, only to confirm later that sarin was used in a 2017 attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhun.

 – Inspection still useful? –

The inspectors will face a difficult task, with all key players having preempted their findings, including Western powers that justified the strikes by claiming their already had proof.

This picture taken on April 14, 2018 shows the wreckage of a building described as part of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) compound in the Barzeh district, north of Damascus, during a press tour organised by the Syrian information ministry. The United States, Britain and France launched strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime early on April 14 in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack after mulling military action for nearly a week. Syrian state news agency SANA reported several missiles hit a research centre in Barzeh, north of Damascus, “destroying a building that included scientific labs and a training centre”. // AFP PHOTO

The OPCW team will also have to deal with the risk that evidence may have been removed from the site, which lies in an area that has been controlled by Russian military police and Syrian forces over the past week.

“That possibility always has to be taken into account, and investigators will look for evidence that shows whether the incident site has been tampered with,” Ralf Trapp, a consultant and member of a previous OPCW mission to Syria, said.

The Syrian military late Saturday declared Eastern Ghouta, the formerly rebel-held enclave of which Douma is the main town, fully retaken after a blistering two-month assault.

Wresting back the opposition stronghold on his doorstep had been a priority for the resurgent Assad and, combined with the limited scope of Saturday’s strikes, the victory declaration yielded ecstatic editorials in state media.

“Damascus came out more powerful and Bashar al-Assad is more than ever an Arab and international leader,” the pro-regime Al-Watan daily wrote.

US President Donald Trump hailed the pre-dawn strikes that lit up the sky around Damascus as “perfectly executed” and exclaimed “Mission Accomplished” on Twitter.

According to US officials, the operation involved three US destroyers, a French frigate and a US submarine located in the Red Sea, the Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean.

 – ‘Locked and loaded’ –

British Tornado and Typhoon warplanes, American B-1 bombers and French Rafale jets also took part in the strikes.

The Pentagon said no further action was planned but Washington’s envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, warned that the US was “locked and loaded” should another gas attack occur.

A Western draft resolution obtained by AFP at a meeting of the UN Security Council Saturday calls for unimpeded deliveries of humanitarian aid and enforcement of a ceasefire and demands that Syria engage in UN-led peace talks.

French President Emmanuel Macron and other Western leaders have called for a diplomatic offensive to follow the strikes in a bid to end a conflict that has killed more than 350,000 people in seven years and displaced half of the population of Syria.

Russia has blocked countless resolutions against its Syrian ally however and the regime has appeared determined to continue its inexorable military reconquest of the country.

“For all the sound and fury of these strikes, their net effect is a slap on the wrist of Bashar al-Assad,” said Nick Heras, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security.

Regime and allied forces are now expected to train their sights on southern districts of Damascus that are still held by the Islamic State jihadist group.

They are then likely to tackle the southern province of Daraa, where protests against he rule of Assad, who has been in power 18 years, broke ou in 2011.

Hours later, the allies signaled their resolve to return to diplomacy, launching a new bid at the United Nations to investigate the chemical weapons attacks.

They circulated a joint draft resolution at the Security Council that also calls for unimpeded deliveries of humanitarian aid and enforcement of a ceasefire and demands that Syria engage in UN-led peace talks, according to the text obtained by AFP.

The narrowly targeted pre-dawn military operation, which took aim at three alleged chemical weapons facilities, earned quick scorn from Russia, but a push by Moscow for condemnation of the strikes at the Security Council fell far short.

Trump and his allies ordered the mission in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack a week ago on the rebel-held town of Douma that left more than 40 people dead.

Washington believes both sarin and chlorine were used in the April 7 attack, a senior US administration official told reporters on Saturday.

Both the regime of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and its ally Russia have denied all responsibility. Moscow slammed the “aggressive actions” of the Western coalition but has not yet responded militarily.

US ambassador Nikki Haley warned her UN counterparts that although the mission was designed as a one-off, that did not preclude further action against Assad.

“I spoke to the president this morning and he said: ‘If the Syrian regime uses this poisonous gas again, the United States is locked and loaded,'” Haley said at emergency Security Council talks.

– Fresh diplomatic push –

Negotiations on the draft resolution put forward by the US, France and Britain are set to begin on Monday.

Among the contentious proposals, it would establish an independent investigation into allegations of toxic gas attacks in Syria with the aim of identifying the perpetrators.

On the humanitarian side, the measure demands medical evacuations and safe passage for aid convoys to be allowed to all areas.

Diplomats said it remained unclear when the council would vote on the proposal, and they were ready to allow time for negotiations to bring Russia aboard.

– ‘Perfectly executed’ –

Just before dawn on Saturday, the sounds of massive explosions and the roar of warplanes rang out across Damascus for about 45 minutes.

“A perfectly executed strike last night,” Trump tweeted early Saturday.

“Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!”

The targets included a scientific research facility near Damascus, and two chemical weapons facilities outside the city of Homs, the US military said, though reports said the buildings had been evacuated in recent days.

Syrian state media reported only three people injured, while Russia’s defense ministry said there were “no victims” among Syrian civilians and military personnel.

According to US officials, the operation involved three US destroyers, a French frigate and a US submarine. The vessels were located in the Red Sea, the Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean.

British Tornado and Typhoon warplanes, American B-1 bombers and French Rafale jets also took part in the strikes.

– Assad defiant –

The strikes were the biggest foreign military action so far against Syria’s regime.

On Saturday Trump, British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron huddled by telephone to discuss their joint action.

“By working together, in a coordinated fashion, we can definitively prevent the Syrian regime from carrying out chemical attacks against its own people,” Macron said on Twitter.

May has faced a backlash from her domestic opposition for launching the strikes without consulting parliament, while opposition lawmakers in the US warned Trump that any broader military campaign would require a well-formulated strategic vision — and authorization from Congress.

Assad responded to the strikes with a defiant vow.

“This aggression will only make Syria and its people more determined to keep fighting and crushing terrorism in every inch of the country,” he said.

Assad’s key ally Iran also slammed the attack, with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei describing Western leaders as “criminals.”

The targets appeared to steer well clear of any Russian personnel or equipment in Syria, where Moscow launched a military intervention in support of Assad in 2015.

The Russian military claimed Syrian air defense systems had intercepted 71 Western missiles, though the Pentagon flatly dismissed the claim and said all missiles hit their targets.

– Too little, too late? –

Despite the strikes, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it was still pursuing its investigation into the Douma attack.

Thousands of rebels and civilians have been bussed out of the town under a Russian-brokered deal. Syrian internal security forces entered Douma on Saturday and later said the town had been fully retaken.

Jaish al-Islam, the group that held Douma, said it only abandoned the town because of the chemical attack.

Ahmad, a 25-year-old mechanic who had been displaced from Douma, told AFP the Western strikes were nevertheless too little, too late.

“Assad won’t collapse. They’ll bomb for a day or two and then the regime will take it out on us,” he said.

The announcement, which represents a key strategic victory for President Bashar al-Assad, came just hours after US-led strikes pounded Syrian government targets in response to a suspected chemical attack on the enclave’s main town of Douma.

“All terrorists have left Douma, the last of their holdouts in Eastern Ghouta,” state news agency SANA quoted an army spokesman as saying Saturday, using the regime’s usual term for rebels.

“Areas of Eastern Ghouta in rural Damascus have been fully cleansed of terrorism,” an army spokesman also said in a statement delivered on state television.

At the start of the year Eastern Ghouta was a sprawling semi-rural area just east of Damascus, home to almost 400,000 inhabitants, which had already endured several years under a government siege that slashed access to food, medicine and other goods.

The Syrian government and allied forces launched a massive assault on February 18 to retake the enclave, which had been out of regime control since 2012.

The intense bombardment killed some 1,700 civilians according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, and pulverised the area, reducing many neighbourhoods to rubble.

Damascus has been accused of carrying out an April 7 chemical weapons attack on Douma, the final part of the enclave where rebels were balking at a Russian-brokered deal to evacuate them to northern Syria.

The United States, France and Britain responded Saturday with pre-dawn strikes on alleged regime chemical weapons sites.

The allies have since signalled their resolve to return to diplomacy, launching a new bid at the United Nations to investigate chemical weapons attacks in the country.

A team of experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is in Damascus and expected to investigate the site of the suspected chemical attack.

– Strategic target –

Assad had made the reconquest of Eastern Ghouta a strategic goal.

The Islamist group Jaish al-Islam rebel group, which was in control of Douma, has said it only agreed to leave because of the Syrian government’s purported use of toxic chemicals on Douma, which medics said killed more than 40 people.

The group has slammed the Western strikes as insufficient, as Assad maintains his grip on the war-ravaged country.

“Punishing the instrument of the crime while keeping the criminal — a farce,” wrote Mohammad Alloush, a key member of Jaish al-Islam.

Syria and Russia have both denied using chemical weapons and said the claims were fabrications used to justify Western military action.

– Mine clearing –

The two-month assault on Eastern Ghouta sparked an international outcry, with the head of the United Nations describing the conditions endured by civilians there as “hell on Earth”.

Few convoys of humanitarian aid were allowed in while rights groups and aid organisations also condemned the targeting of medical facilities across the besieged territory.

Dozens of civilians in government-controlled central Damascus were also killed by rockets and mortar rounds fired from Eastern Ghouta by the rebel groups that held it.

On Saturday Syria’s internal security forces entered Douma, after the last convoy of buses transporting members of Jaish al-Islam and their relatives left the town.

The Syrian army said a clean up operation was under way in the battered enclave.

“Engineering units are starting to clear the mines and explosives sewn by the terrorists in the town to allow the rest of the units to secure the liberated areas and prepare them for the return of civilians to their homes,” the army spokesman said.

Thousands of civilians who fled the offensive have already returned to areas previously retaken by the army and allied forces.

A large number of Eastern Ghouta residents were bussed to the northern province of Idlib, which is largely outside government control and hosts several jihadist and other rebel groups.

The civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

Assad has managed to cling on to power, retaking swathes of territory with the help of ally Russia.