‘Syria drops chlorine gas in barrel bombs’
UN SECURITY COUNCIL HAS CONDEMNED USE OF THE CHEMICAL AS A WEAPON
Eyes watering, struggling to breathe, Abd Al Mouin, 22, dragged his nephews from a house reeking of noxious fumes, then briefly blacked out. Even fresh air, he recalled, was “burning my lungs.”
The chaos unfolded in the Syrian town of Sarmeen one night this spring, as walkietalkies warned of helicopters flying from a nearby army base, a signal for residents to take cover. Soon, residents said, there were sounds of aircraft, a smell of bleach and gasping victims streaming to a clinic.
Two years after President Bashar Al Assad agreed to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, there is mounting evidence that his government is flouting international law to drop jerry-built chlorine bombs on rebel-held areas.
Lately, the pace of the bombardments in contested areas like Idlib province has picked up, rescue workers say, as government forces have faced new threats from rebels.
“People are so used to it, they know from the sound,” said Hatem Abu Marwan, 29, a rescue worker with the White Helmets civil defence organization, a note of exasperation creeping into his voice when asked to explain.
“We know the sound of a helicopter that goes to a low height and drops a barrel. Nobody has aircraft except the regime.”
Prodded by the United States, the UN Security Council is discussing a draft resolution that would create a panel, reporting to the secretary-general, to determine which of the warring parties is responsible for using chlorine as a weapon, according to Council diplomats.
Syrian state media dismiss the allegations as propaganda. “There is no law to defend us as human beings, this is what we understand from the Security Council,” said Abu Marwan, a law school graduate, weeping as he recalled holding a dying child in Sarmeen. “I didn’t see in humanitarian law anything that says ‘except for Syrians.’”
In contrast to stronger toxins like nerve agents and mustard gas, chlorine is lethal only in highly concentrated doses and where medical treatment is not immediately available, making it more an instrument of terror than of mass slaughter.
It is typically dropped in barrel bombs containing canisters that explode on impact, distributing clouds of gas over civilian populations, and is distinguishable by its characteristic odour.
The Security Council did condemn the use of chlorine as a weapon in Syria, in February. But with Russia, the Syrian government’s most powerful ally, wielding a veto, there was no Council agreement to assign blame.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which monitors agreements on toxic arms, found that chlorine had been used “systematically and repeatedly” in three Syrian villages in 2014, and mentioned witness accounts of helicopter-borne chlorine bombs in its report. But it, too, lacked authorization to say who used them.
Frustrated with the Security Council’s impasse over the issue, rescue workers and doctors are now working to bring evidence of chlorine gas attacks directly to the French, British and US governments.
But investigators face difficulties. Chlorine dissipates quickly in the atmosphere and does not last in blood or urine, and residue stays in soil for just 48 hours, leaving little time to transport samples across borders.