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The US just attacked Assad for the first time - here's how Syria's six-year civil war has unfolded

Veronika BondarenkoApr 12, 2017, 23:30 IST

Children push containers in strollers as they flee deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo, Syria December 12, 2016Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters

Last week, the US responded to a deadly chemical weapons attack believed to have been carried out by the Syrian government six years into the country's devastating civil war.

The war, which erupted in 2011 following a popular uprising against the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad, has left nearly half a million people dead and sparked the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

These are the complicated and horrifying events that sparked the war, and, ultimately, the US response.