Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Croatian newspaper Vecernji List in Damascus, Syria on April 6, 2017.

A US missile strike on an airbase in central Syria early on Friday was “foolish and irresponsible,” President Bashar al-Assad’s office said.

“What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behavior, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality,” a statement said.

The US fired a barrage of 59 cruise missiles at the Shayrat base, killing at least six, in response to a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town on Tuesday widely blamed on the Damascus regime.

“An air commodore was among the six soldiers killed,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. “The airbase was almost completely destroyed – the runway, the fuel tanks and the air defenses were all blown to pieces,” the Britain-based monitoring group said. The Syrian government has categorically denied the accusation, saying it had struck an arms depot belonging to a militant group.

Assad’s office said the government would redouble its efforts against rebel groups after the US strike — the first direct military action by Washington against the Damascus regime.

“This aggression has increased Syria’s determination to strike these terrorist agents, to continue crushing them and to speed up the pace of work on this, wherever they are on Syrian territory,” it said.

“The disgraceful act of targeting a sovereign state’s airport demonstrates once again that different administrations do not change deeper policies.”

The massive strike — US President Donald Trump’s biggest military decision since taking office — marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria’s six-year civil war.

It followed days of outrage at images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions from the suspected sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun.