Russia blames Syrian rebels for deadly chemical attack
RUSSIAN officials blamed Syrian rebels yesterday for a chemical attack which killed scores of people, many of them women and children, and has been widely attributed to the Syrian government.
The attack on the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhun drew international censure on Tuesday, as images circulated of children lying limp and elderly men foaming at the mouth.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said that at least 72 people were killed, making it the deadliest chemical assault since 2013, when the Syrian government dropped sarin on the Damascus suburbs, killing hundreds of people as they slept and bringing the United States and Europe to the verge of military intervention.
Turkey’s health minister, Recep Akdag, said that 30 Syrians were taken across the border and treated and they displayed the symptoms of a chemical attack, according to the Haber Turk news channel.
The chemical weapons, however, came from the rebel side, asserted a Russian military spokesman yesterday, explaining that Syrian warplanes had been targeting rebel workshops on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhun.
“The territory of this storage facility housed workshops to produce projectiles filled with toxic agents,” Major General Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman for Russia’s Ministry of Defence, said in a recorded statement.
His comments marked a rare admission that airstrikes had taken place in the area. Moscow typically denies involvement in such mass casualty attacks, and has previously falsified video footage in an attempt to exonerate its war planes.
Russia also blamed the 2013 sarin attack on rebels attempting to provoke international intervention.
Syrian rebel commander Hasan Haj Ali told Reuters that the Russian assertion was “a lie”, saying the rebels didn’t have the capablities to produce chemical weapons and there were no military positions in the area bombed, either.
“Everyone saw the plane while it was bombing with gas,” he said.
The attack comes amid an upswing in Syrian government strikes against Idlib province, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled to from other battle zones around the country.
Doctors and activists in this area say there has also been an upswing in the use of chemical weapons since the end of last year.
The Syrian government has denied any involvement in Tuesday’s attacks or using chemical weapons.
The UN Security Council was preparing for an emergency meeting over the deadly attack yesterday while international donors were gathered in Brussels to drum up billions of dol- lars in aid for Syria’s eventual reconstruction.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the chemical attack a “moment of truth” for Syria and hoped it would result in action by those who have influence on the conflict.
“The horrific events of yesterday demonstrate that unfortunately war crimes are going on in Syria, that international humanitarian law remains being violated frequently.”