Syria's President Bashar al-Assad said a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town was a "fabrication" to justify a US military strike, in an exclusive AFP interview.

"Definitely, 100 percent for us, it's fabrication... Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack," Assad said Wednesday, in his first interview since American cruise missiles hit a central Syrian air base.