President Donald Trump condemned the recent chemical attack on Syrian civilians by the Syrian government as a "heinous attack" on Monday.
"I would like to begin by condemning the heinous attack on innocent Syrians with banned chemical weapons," Trump said. "It was an atrocious attack. It was horrible. You don't see things like that as bad as the news is around the world, you just don't see those images."
A reported chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime against a rebel-held suburb of Damascus occurred Saturday, leaving dozens dead.
Trump said the United States is monitoring the situation closely and he will be making major decisions about Syria within the next 24 to 48 hours.
"We are studying that situation extremely closely. We are meeting with our military and everybody else, and we'll be making some major decisions over the next 24 to 48 hours," Trump said. "We are very concerned. When a thing like that can happen, this is about humanity. We're talking about humanity and it can't be allowed to happen."
Trump added that the U.S. is trying to get officials onto the scene to investigate what happened but noted the difficulty because of the opposition from the Syrian government.
"So we'll be looking at that barbaric act and studying what's going on. We're trying to get people in there, as you know, it's been surrounded, so it's hard to get people in," Trump said. "Because not only has it been hit, it's been surrounded. And if they're innocent, why aren't they allowing people to go in and prove? Because as you know, they're claiming they didn't make the attack. So if it's Russia, if it's Syria, if it's Iran, if it's all of them together, we'll figure it out and we'll know the answers quite soon. So we're looking at that very, very strongly and very seriously."
Reporters shouted questions after Trump finished his statement.
One question was whether military action was an option. "Nothing is off the table," Trump answered.
Another question was whether there was any doubt as to who was behind it. "No, they're saying they're not. To me there's not much a doubt, but the generals will figure it out," Trump said.
Trump warned of a "big price to pay" for the latest attack in a tweet Sunday, calling Assad an "animal" and specifically calling out Russian President Vladimir Putin for backing him.
"Everybody is going to pay a price," he said.