FRANCE SAYS CHEMICAL EVIDENCE PROBABLY REMOVED
▶ Russia and Syria allow weapons inspectors into Douma but Paris expresses suspicion about the delay
International experts yesterday entered Douma in Syria to begin their investigation into this month’s chemical weapons attack on the town.
But the French government earlier said there was a high probability that the Syrian regime and its backers had removed evidence from the site of the chemical weapons attack near Damascus.
On Monday, Syrian and Russian authorities barred the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ inspectors from the site of the attack because of “pending security issues”.
The French Foreign Ministry said yesterday that the lack of permission to enter Douma was “very likely that proof and essential elements are disappearing from this site”.
France, Britain and the US on Saturday launched co-ordinated strikes on what they said were three chemical weapons production sites in Syria, used by Bashar Al Assad’s regime.
In a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the coalition launched more than 100 missiles to defend the “honour of the international community”.
Mr Macron joined US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May in approving the strikes without paliamentary approval after the April 7 attack killed at least 70 people and provoked international outrage.
It was a sharp reversal from Mr Trump’s comments a week earlier when he said he was seeking to end American involvement in the country.
Also yesterday, Syrian state media retracted a claim that new strikes had set off its air defence missile systems in the Homs area.
A new attack could trigger a wider escalation in the country where rival powers have been vying for influence.
“Last night, a false alarm that Syrian air space had been penetrated triggered the blowing of air defence sirens and the firing of several missiles,” a Syrian military source told news agency Sana. “There was no external attack on Syria.”
The pictures surfacing from the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma on April 8 were not unfamiliar. Men, women and children laid convulsing on the floor, white foam projecting from their mouths.
The world has witnessed these horrific images time and again.
Dozens died, and many more survivors were affected, their eyes burning and their throats stifled by the chemicals, human rights and rebel groups said.
The incident drew the ire of western governments, while
Damascus and its supporters in Moscow and Tehran said rebels had staged the attack.
Douma was the latest chemical barrage in five years of incidents across Syria, in which the complex war last month entered its eighth year.
Before the assault in Douma, there were 34 chemical attacks, most using chlorine, confirmed to have taken place inside Syria since 2013, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria says.
The commission holds the Al Assad regime responsible for many of them. The independent body, set up by the UN Human Rights Council, is also investigating the Douma attack.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the coalition launched more than 100 missiles in Syria to defend the ‘honour of the international community’