Inspectors check gas attack claim

HOT ON THE HEELS OF WESTERN STRIKES Syrian deputy minister says they will prove chemical weapons were not used.

International inspectors were to begin work yesterday at the site near Damascus of an alleged chemical attack that prompted an unprecedented wave of Western strikes against Syria’s regime.

US, French and British missiles destroyed sites suspected of hosting chemical arms development and storage facilities, but the buildings were mostly empty and the Western trio swiftly reverted to its diplomatic efforts.

Washington trumpeted the success of the biggest international attack on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but both Damascus and Syria’s opposition rubbished its impact.

A team of chemical experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague, arrived in Damascus hours after the strikes. They will investigate the site of an April 7 attack in Douma, just east Damascus, which Western powers said involved chlorine and sarin and killed dozens.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Ayman Soussan said the experts would prove chemical weapons were never used.

The OPCW itself had declared that the Syrian government’s chemical weapons stockpile had been removed in 2014, only to confirm later that sarin was used in a 2017 attack in a northern town.

The inspectors have a difficult task, with all key players having preempted their findings, including Western powers that justified the strikes by claiming they already had proof. There is also the risk evidence may have been removed from the site, which is in an area that has been controlled by Russian military police and Syrian forces for the past week.

“Investigators will look for evidence that shows whether the incident site has been tampered with,” Ralf Trapp, a consultant and member of a previous OPCW mission to Syria, said.

The Syrian army on Saturday declared Eastern Ghouta, the formerly rebel-held area in which Douma is the main town, retaken.

According to US officials, the strikes involved three US destroyers, a French frigate and a US submarine located in the Red Sea, the Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean. British Tornado and Typhoon warplanes, American B-1 bombers and French Rafale jets also took part.

Regime and allied forces are now expected to focus on southern parts of Damascus held by the Islamic State. – AFP