Scores killed in gas attack against Syrian rebels
Assad denies ever having used chemical weapons • White House: Obama failed to stop regime
BEIRUT (Reuters) – A suspected Syrian government chemical attack killed scores of people, including children, in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday, a monitoring group, medics and rescue workers in the rebel-held area said.
The Syrian military denied responsibility and said it would never use chemical weapons.
The head of the health authority in rebel-held Idlib said more than 50 people had been killed and 300 wounded. The Union of Medical Care Organizations, a coalition of international aid agencies that funds hospitals in Syria, said at least 100 people had died.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack killed at least 58 people and was believed to have been carried out by Syrian government jets. It caused many people to choke and some to foam at the mouth.
Director Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters the assessment that Syrian government warplanes were to blame was based on several factors such as the type of aircraft, including Sukhoi 22 jets, that carried out the raid.
“We deny completely the use of any chemical or toxic material in Khan Sheikhoun town today and the army has not used nor will use in any place or time neither in the past or in the future,” the Syrian army command said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its aircraft had not carried out the attack. The UN Security Council is expected to meet Wednesday to discuss the incident.
Reuters photographs showed people breathing through oxygen masks and wearing protection suits, while others carried the bodies of dead children, and corpses wrapped in blankets were lined up on the ground.
Activists in northern Syria circulated pictures on social media showing a man with foam around his mouth and rescue workers hosing down almost-naked children squirming on the floor.
According to Majd Khalaf, a volunteer with the Syrian White Helmets, the civil defense, over 50 people, mostly women and children were killed in the attack and another 300 were wounded. Khalaf told The Jerusalem Post that planes “conducted many airstrikes that targeted civilian homes in the city of Khan Sheikhoun” between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning.
Upon arriving to the site of the attack, several members of Syrian Civil Defense teams “suffered from severe respiratory disorders, five team
members were wounded, three in critical condition.” Despite their wounds, Khalaf said the Syrian Civil Defense teams in Khan Sheikhoun “in cooperation with the medical teams, provided first aid to the wounded, washed their bodies with water and removed their contaminated clothes.”
“All the wounded were transported outside the city because there is no hospital that can accommodate the cases,” Khalaf added.
The incident reported at Khan Sheikhoun would be the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since sarin gas killed hundreds of civilians in Ghouta near Damascus in August 2013. Western states said the Syrian government was responsible for that attack. Damascus blamed rebels.
A senior US State Department official said it appeared the attack, blamed on President Bashar Assad, amounted to a war crime.
Mounzer Khalil, head of Idlib’s health authority, said hospitals in the province were overflowing with victims.
“This morning, at 6:30 a.m., warplanes targeted Khan Sheikhoun with gases, believed to be sarin and chlorine,” he told a news conference.
Warplanes later struck near a medical point where victims of the attack were receiving treatment, the observatory and civil defense workers said.
The White Helmets said jets struck one of its centers in the area and the nearby medical point.
The White House released a statement from President Donald Trump: “Today’s chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world. These heinous actions by the Bashar Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a ‘redline’ against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing. The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this intolerable attack.”
French President François Hollande directly blamed Syrian government forces and said Assad’s allies were emboldening him to act with impunity.
Assad has enjoyed staunch military backing from Iran and Russia in the war.
Britain said he would be guilty of a war crime if it were proved that his regime was responsible. British Prime Minister Theresa May called for an investigation into the attack.
In February, Russia, backed by China, cast its seventh veto to protect Assad’s government from UN Security Council action, blocking a bid by Western powers to impose sanctions over accusations of chemical weapons attacks during the conflict.
A series of investigations by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found that various parties in the Syrian war had used chlorine gas, sulfur mustard gas and sarin gas.
A joint UN-OPCW report published in October said government forces used chlorine in a toxic gas attack in Qmenas in March 2015. An earlier report by the same team blamed Syrian government troops for chlorine attacks in Talmenes in March 2014 and Sarmin in March 2015. It also said Islamic State had used sulfur mustard gas.
The OPCW said it had begun “gathering and analyzing information from all available sources” about the suspected Khan Sheikhoun attack.
Turkey, which backs the anti-Assad opposition, said the attack could derail Russian-backed diplomatic efforts to shore up a cease-fire.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said 15 people hurt in the attack, mostly women and children, had been taken to Turkey.
Footage from Turkey’s Dogan news agency showed at least four people being brought out of ambulances on stretchers in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli by medical staff wearing face masks. One was a young boy.
An official at the Turkish Health Ministry said Turkey’s disaster management agency was first “scanning those arriving for chemical weapons, then decontaminating them from chemicals” before they could be taken to the hospital.
Idlib province contains the largest populated area controlled by anti-Assad rebels – both nationalist Free Syrian Army groups and powerful Islamist factions, including the former al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the attack. They said the two leaders had also emphasized the importance of maintaining the much-violated cease-fire.
Idlib’s population has ballooned, with thousands of fighters and civilians shuttled out of Aleppo and areas around Damascus that the government has retaken in recent months as Assad has gained the upper hand in the war.
The United States has also launched a spate of airstrikes in Idlib this year, targeting jihadist insurgents.
Following the 2013 attack, Syria joined the international Chemical Weapons Convention under a US-Russia deal, averting the threat of a US-led military intervention.
Under the deal, Syria agreed to give up its toxic arsenal and surrendered 1,300 tons of toxic weapons and industrial chemicals to the international community for destruction.
UN-OPCW investigators found, however, that it continued to use chlorine, which is widely available and difficult to trace, in so-called barrel bombs, dropped from helicopters.
Although chlorine is not a banned substance, the use of any chemical is banned under 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Syria is a member.
Damascus has repeatedly denied using such weapons during the six-year war, which has killed hundreds of thousands and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.
Anna Ahronheim contributed to this report. •