Russia backs Syria over gas attack
SYRIA: Diplomats at the United Nations Security Council sparred yesterday over whether to hold President Bashar al-assad’s government responsible for a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people in northern Syria, while United States intelligence officials, Doctors Without Borders and the UN healthy agency said evidence pointed to nerve gas exposure.
The Trump administration and other world leaders said the Syrian government was to blame, but Moscow, a key ally of Assad, said the assault was caused by a Syrian air strike that hit a rebel stockpile of chemical arms.
Early US assessments showed the use of chlorine gas and traces of the nerve agent sarin in the attack on Wednesday that terrorised the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, according to two US officials.
Israeli military intelligence officers also believe Syrian government forces were behind the attack.
Israel believes Assad has tonnes of chemical weapons still in his arsenal, despite a concerted operation three years ago by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to rid the government of its stockpile.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also blamed the Syrian government for the attack.
In Khan Sheikhoun, rescue workers found terrified survivors still hiding in shelters as another wave of air strikes battered the town yesterday. Those strikes appeared to deliver only conventional weapons damage.
Among those discovered alive were two women and a boy found hiding in a shelter beneath their home, the Civil Defence search and rescue group said.
The effects of the attack overwhelmed hospitals in the town, leading paramedics to send patients to medical facilities across rebel-held areas in northern Syria, as well as to Turkey.
The Turkish Health Ministry said three victims died receiving treatment inside its borders. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the toll at 86 killed.
Victims of the attack showed signs of nerve gas exposure, the World Health Organisation and Doctors Without Borders said, including suffocation, foaming at the mouth, convulsions, constricted pupils and involuntary defecation.
Paramedics were using fire hoses to wash the chemicals from the bodies of victims.
Medical teams also reported smelling bleach on survivors of the attack, suggesting chlorine gas was also used, Doctors Without Borders said.
The magnitude of the attack was reflected in the images of the dead – children piled in heaps for burial, a father carrying his lifeless young twins.
The visuals from the scene were reminiscent of a 2013 nerve gas attack on the suburbs of Damascus that left hundreds dead and prompted an agreement brokered by the US and Russia to disarm Assad’s chemical stockpile.
Western nations blamed government forces for that attack, where effects were concentrated on opposition-held areas. – AP