Don’t use dirty weapons, US warns Assad

WASHINGTON, D.C.: With the United Nations warning of a potential “bloodbath” in Syria’s Idlib province, the United States warned President Bashar alAssad on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) it would respond “swiftly and appropriately” if he uses chemical weapons against his own people.

As Syrian troops massed near the northwestern region of nearly three million people, the last major rebel stronghold, renewed Russian air and Turkey held “the key for (a) soft solution to the Idlib issue”

humanitarian disaster.

De Mistura pointed to press reports indicating that Syria has set a him Tuesday against using chemical weapons.

“Such an attack would be a reckless

of thousands of people,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, warning the US and its allies “will respond swiftly and appropriately.”

Haley’s own warning focused more explicitly on the prospect of a chemical attack.

“If they want to continue to go

can do that, but they cannot do it with chemical weapons,” she said.

‘Pocket of terrorism’

De Mistura urged Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to urgently speak on the

meet with their Iranian counterpart in Tehran on Friday.

His appeal came after Russian warplanes resumed air strikes on

- tory for Human Rights, which relies on sources in Syria for its reports,

were killed in the raids, while 10 people were wounded.

form the last major chunk of territory still in rebel hands.

Many of the residents are rebels

of other areas as they came back under Syrian regime control.

- eral areas held by the jihadist-led Hayat Tahrir al- Sham alliance, among them the large town of Jisr al-Shughur, but also areas held by

- ing the town of Ariha.

The Syrian military has been deploying reinforcements to the zone for more than a month, and Russia has stepped up its rhetoric.

“We know that the Syrian armed this problem,” Putin’s spokesman

“pocket of terrorism.”

Moscow has been carrying out strikes in Syria since September

It accuses rebels in Idlib of attacking Hmeimim with weaponized drones and insists jihadists in De Mistura said there were an estimated 10,000 fighters with UN-designated terror groups currently in Idlib.

But he stressed that there are some

including around one million children, who “are not terrorists.”

“There are many more babies than terrorists in Idlib,” said Jan Egeland, head of the UN’s humanitarian taskforce for Syria. “We appeal for sanity.” Amid a diplomatic frenzy to on Idlib, French Foreign Minister

France-Presse Tuesday “it is important today that the path to negotiations be open and not that toward confrontation.”

De Mistura, whose years of efforts to push forward a Syrian peace deal

insisted that he would pursue his efforts to set up a committee to write a new Syrian constitution.

plan to postpone two rounds of consultations next week with “It is going to be a moment of truth,” he said.

been killed and millions displaced with the brutal repression of an-