Syrian forces used nerve gas in four recent attacks – HRW

UNITED NATIONS, United States: Syrian government forces used deadly nerve gas in Khan Sheikhun and in three other recent attacks, Human Rights Watch said, describing a “clear pattern” of chemical weapons use that could amount to crimes against humanity.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are also stepping up chlorine gas attacks and have begun using surface-fired rockets filled with chlorine in fighting near Damascus, the US-based rights group said in a new report.

“The government’s use of nerve agents is a deadly escalation – and part of a clear pattern,” said Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director.

“In the last six months, the government has used warplanes, helicopters, and ground forces to deliver chlorine and sarin in Damascus, Hama, Idlib and Aleppo.”

“That’s widespread and systematic use of chemical weapons,” he said.

Last month, Assad told AFP in an interview that the suspected sarin attack in Khan Sheikhun was “100 percent” fabricated, serving as a pretext for US missile strikes on a Syrian air field.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 60 witnesses and collected photos and videos providing information on the suspected April 4 attack, and on three other alleged uses of nerve gases in December 2016 and March 2017.

The rights group said at least 92 people including 30 children died from exposure to sarin in Khan Sheikhun and hundreds more were injured. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights has put the death toll at 88.

Residents said a first bomb believed to be carrying the deadly agent sarin was dropped near the town’s central bakery and was followed by three or four highexplosive bombs a few minutes later, the report said.

Dozens of photos and videos provided by residents of a crater from the first bomb showed a green- colored metal fragment that Human Rights Watch said was likely the Soviet-produced KhAB-250 bomb.

Human Rights Watch said 64 people died from exposure to nerve agents after warplanes attacked territory controlled by the Islamic State group in eastern Hama on December 11 and December 12.

Activists and local residents provided names of the victims, while Human Rights Watch interviewed four witnesses and two medical personnel about the alleged attacks. — AFP

— AFP photo File photo shows a Syrian man being taken by civil defence workers to a small hospital in the town of Maaret al-Noman following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, a nearby rebel-held town in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province.