WASHINGTON (WUSA9) — President Trump and European leaders agreed the airstrikes in Syria "were successful and necessary to deter" the future use of chemical weapons, according to the White House.
However, the Syrian regime is refuting the effectiveness of those strikes.
RELATED: Raw footage shows strikes over Syria
Some Syrian Americans in Washington, DC believed the attacks were a step in the right direction as dozens of protesters complained about U.S. involvement in the missile strikes.
“It’s really awful. It’s upsetting. It’s unfair,” Noor Shakfeh said. “The images were awful. To know that this is the situation -- that this is what has become of Syria is very painful.”
Shakfeh spoke with WUSA9 about the chaos that has erupted in Syria since 2011, including the deadly chemical attack from one week ago.
“It’s very hard to see that this is what has become of Syria which is a place that I’ve known as my heritage, and my home, and where my family is,” Shakfeh explained.
Shakfeh is Syrian American with family trapped the war-torn country.
“In Syria, there is so much fear around talking about the regime and things related to what’s happening now,” she said. “You can’t talk about it. So, you just act like nothing is happening.”
U.S., French, and British forces agreed the chemical warfare could not be ignored.
Shakfeh, who is a member of the Syrian American Council, applauded the decision to unleash more than 100 missiles on the heart of Syria’s chemical weapons program.
“There has to be sustained effort to hold the Assad regime accountable and offer the Syrian people the justice and accountability that they deserve,” Shakfeh told WUSA9.
The Syrian American Council released the following statement:
We urge the coalition to sustain action and to ground Assad’s air force. In the wake of the Assad regime and its allies' continued failure to respect UN Security Council resolutions and its insistence in partaking in the most egregious mass atrocities--chemical weapons use being only one of them, we call for the creation of a no-fly zone to disable the Assad regime’s ability to commit further war crimes and to force the regime to partake in legitimate political negotiations.
The decision to target a scientific research center, a chemical weapons storage facility, a second storage facility, and command post drew opposition.
One group protested the missile strikes in front of the White House on Friday night.
“This will do nothing more than cause more death and destruction to a country that is already wrecked with death and destruction,” Ariel Gold said.
Another group called the Answer Coalition protested on Saturday morning to fight against -- what it called-- a ‘race towards an expanded war in Syria.’
