China's top newspaper said on Wednesday, August 28 the United States and its allies were seeking to use the issue of chemical weapons to pursue regime change in Syria illegally and fan an already ugly and difficult conflict, according to Reuters.

The United States and its allies are gearing up for a probable military strike against Syria that could come within days and would be the most aggressive action by Western powers in the Middle Eastern nation's two-and-a-half-year civil war.

Western envoys have told the Syrian opposition to expect a military response soon against President Bashar al-Assad's forces as punishment for a chemical weapons attack last week, according to sources who attended a meeting with the rebel Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul.

The People's Daily, the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, said the overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a decade ago on the pretext he had weapons of mass destruction risked repeating itself in Syria.

"The essence of the Iraq war was to circumvent the United Nations and change the government of a sovereign nation with the aid of force," the newspaper said in a commentary, which it said "contravened the basic principles of morality and justice".

"The international community must be on high alert for certain foreign forces repeating this method in Syria," the paper said. "Since the start of Syria's civil war, the impulse to forcefully topple the Assad government has never vanished."