Senior administration officials Tuesday provided evidence the Syrian government is responsible for last week’s chemical weapons attack, which killed almost 90 people, and that Russia is trying to cover it up, during a conference call with reporters.

That attack prompted President Donald Trump to order a cruise-missile strike at the Syrian airbase from which U.S. officials claim the chemical attack was launched.

“This is an opportunity … for the Russians to choose to stop the disinformation campaign.”

“This is an opportunity … for the Russians to choose to stop the disinformation campaign,” a senior White House official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

The Syrian and Russian governments both have vehemently denied the regime was responsible for the attack. The Russian government has suggested that the release of nerve gas in the province of Idlib occurred when a bomb exploded on a terrorist-held warehouse containing chemical munitions.

Another senior White House official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said video shows Su-22 Syrian aircraft taking off from the Shayrat airbase and dropping a bomb at about 6:55 a.m. local time. The airplanes were in the vicinity for about 20 minutes and then departed, she said.

The bomb fell in the middle of a street, not on a building, the official said. She said U.S. officials observed leakage from that blast site consistent with chemical weapons, not explosive debris that would be expected from a conventional bomb. She said that follow-up samples of victims confirmed sarin gas.

“The symptomology was quite consistent,” she said.

The official said evidence has grown stronger since the attack.

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“Since we started coming forward in the immediate wake of the attack, all the way to today, we continue to get additional information,” she said. “And the information that we get about this attack continues to be consistent with our understanding of the attack … All of that tells a very clear and consistent story of what we think happened.”

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Another senior White House official offered an explanation for the seeming mindlessness of using chemical weapons. Some have questioned whether the attack was a false-flag operation since Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — having gained the upper hand in the civil war thanks to support from the Russian military — seemingly would have little incentive to risk a backlash by using chemical weapons.

The official said rebels from the Idlib province in mid-March launched an offensive toward Hama, a strategically important city that is home to a key Syrian airbase.

“The opposition offensive approach was able to penetrate to within just a couple of miles of that strategic airbase and also threaten the Hama population center, within just a few miles,” the official said.

He said the Syrian regime was “spread quite thin” trying to conduct defensive operations and consolidate its position in the city of Aleppo, which had been a stronghold for the Islamic State terrorist group.

“We believe that the regime probably calculated at that point that chemical weapons were probably necessary in order to try to make up for the manpower deficiency,” the official said. “In that context, you can see that the chemical weapons attack could fit within the flow of a punch-counterpunch, operational punch-counterpunch.”

The second White House official said U.S. intelligence indicates that people historically associated with Syria’s chemical weapons program were seen at the airfield in late March and again just before and during the attack.

She also rejected allegations that the evidence might have been faked.

“The absolute mass of data that we have … is just too massive for really any intelligence to fabricate in that short a period of time,” she said. “We just think that’s not a feasible explanation.”

The officials said that the Russians and Syrians since 2013 have engaged in a “very clear campaign to try to obfuscate the nature of attacks” and that, “Often, their own information is inconsistent with their own narrative.”

The official said Syria, as part of a deal brokered by former President Barack Obama, surrendered about 1,000 tons of chemical munitions that later were destroyed. Since then, she said, there have been allegations of more than 200 chemical attacks, mostly involving chlorine, which was not part of the 2013 agreement.

She said the administration takes “very seriously the possibility” of additional chemical weapons elsewhere in Syria.

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“This is quite concerning, given that the Russians were part of setting up the deal by which Syria was supposed to give up its chemical weapons,” she said.

Another senior White House official said the administration has not reached consensus as to whether Russia knew about the Syrian chemical attack beforehand.

“We do think it is worth asking the Russians, how is it possible their forces were co-located with the Syrian forces that planned, prepared, and carried out the chemical weapons attack, and they did not have foreknowledge?” he said.