Inspectors Enter Syria’s Chemical Attack Site amid Concerns for Probe

Saudi Arabia says open to sending troops to Syria under wider coalition

International investigators on Tuesday entered a Syrian town hit by an alleged chemical attack, after days of delay and warnings by Western powers that crucial evidence had likely been removed, AFP reported.

The suspected gas attack on April 7 on Douma, near Damascus, reportedly left more than 40 people dead and was blamed by Western powers on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In response, the United States, France and Britain conducted unprecedented missile strikes on Syrian military installations, but Paris admitted on Tuesday they were a matter of “honour” that had solved nothing.

“Experts from the chemical weapons committee enter the town of Douma,” state news agency SANA wrote, referring to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The inspectors arrived in Damascus on the day of the Western strikes but had not been allowed to enter Douma.

France and the United States appeared to question the purpose of such a mission, warning that any incriminating evidence had likely been removed by now.

“It is highly likely that evidence and essential elements disappear from the site, which is completely controlled by the Russian and Syrian armies,” the French foreign ministry said.

The US ambassador to the OPCW, Ken Ward, had claimed Monday that the Russians had already visited the site and “may have tampered with it”.

In an impassioned defence to the European Parliament on Tuesday, France’s President Emmanuel Macron admitted that Saturday’s strikes had been a more political than military decision.

“Three countries have intervened, and let me be quite frank, quite honest -- this is for the honour of the international community,” he said in the French city of Strasbourg.

“These strikes don’t necessarily resolve anything but I think they were important,” Macron added.

The French leader was also set to strip Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of a prestigious award he was granted by former president Jacques Chirac in 2001.

In another development, Saudi Arabia has agreed to send troops to Syria under the U.S.-led coalition if a decision was taken to widen it, Reuters reported Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir as saying on Tuesday.

“We are in discussion with the U.S. and have been since the beginning of the Syrian crisis about sending forces into Syria,” Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, adding that Riyadh had previously proposed this idea to former U.S. President Barack Obama.