Doctors suggest Afrin was hit by poison-gas attack

Six civilians had breathing problems and other symptoms indicative of poison gas inhalation after an attack launched by Turkey on the Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin, reports said yesterday.

Skyrian Kurdish news outlets quoted local doctors in Afrin as saying the hospital treated six people suffering shortness of breath, vomiting and skin rashes.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also quoted local doctors in a report.

Videos released from the hospital showed people fitted with oxygen masks who did not otherwise show symptoms of gas attack inhalation such as twitching, foaming at the mouth or vomiting.

Syria’s state Sana news agency said Turkey fired several shells containing “toxic substances” on a village in Afrin on Friday night.

The Turkish military repeated in a weekly statement published yesterday that it did not use internationally “banned ammunition” in its Afrin operation, saying “the Turkish Armed Forces does not keep such ammunition in its inventory”.

The army said it was careful to not harm civilians and only targets “terrorists” and their positions in the Afrin region.

A Turkish diplomatic source later told Agence France-Presse that Ankara “never used” chemical weapons in Syria and accusations that it had done so during its offensive in Afrin were “baseless”.

The Turkish military launched an aerial and ground offensive on Afrin, in north-western Syria, on January 20.

It says the aim of the operation is to push out the Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units from the enclave.

Ankara considers the units to be a terrorist group and an extension of the Kurdish insurgents it fights in Turkey.

Sana and Kurdish news outlets including Kurdistan 24 quoted doctor Khalil Sabri at the Afrin hospital as saying the attack occurred on the village of Aranda and that victims suffered shortness of breath, skin rashes, vomiting and low blood pressure.