Gas raid didn’t happen and no children died says Assad
syrIaN tyrant Bashar al-assad yesterday claimed reports his regime gassed innocent civilians in a rebel-held town were ‘100 per cent fabrication’.
He said the West was working hand in glove with the terrorists and made up the story as a pretext for the Us missile strike on a syrian air base.
at least 87 people, including 31 children, were killed in the chemical attack on the town of Khan sheikhun on april 4, according to human rights observers.
But assad claimed in an interview that there was no proof children had died and said the footage which shocked the world could be a faked video.
He said: ‘Definitely, 100 per cent for us, it’s fabrication.
‘Our impression is that the West, mainly the United states, is hand in glove with the terrorists. they fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack.
‘We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan sheikhun. Were they dead at all?’
His allegations were denounced by the father pictured carrying his dead twins ahmed and aya after the chemical attack. abdul Hamid al-yousef, who lost 22 members of his family last week, said: ‘I pray that all the governments of all the world do not believe the lies of this criminal regime.
‘How can he pretend that they are not dead? How? We saw them. We buried them with our own hands. For assad we all are terrorists, so we expect that he will lie again and again. to him those women, those children are all terrorists.
‘assad has lost touch with reality and lost his legitimacy.’
theresa May said yesterday that it was highly likely the atrocity had been carried out by the syrian regime because it was the only army in the area capable of carrying it out.
and the Prime Minister offered support to her beleaguered Foreign secretary Boris Johnson, saying he had done an ‘excellent job’ despite failing to persuade Western allies to impose sanctions on senior russian figures.
British scientists have said the toxic gas sarin was used in the attack on Khan sheikhun. Hundreds suffered symptoms consistent with a nerve agent.
Witnesses said they saw warplanes attack the town but russia says a rebel depot of chemical munitions was hit. shocking footage showed victims – many of them children – convulsing and foaming at the mouth. But assad said: ‘there was no order to make any attack.
‘We don’t have any chemical weapons, we gave up our arsenal a few years ago. Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them. We have never used our chemical arsenal in our history.’
arguing that the West had made up the story, he said: ‘It’s stage one, the play [they staged] that we saw on social network and tVs, then propaganda and then stage two, the military attack.’
He insisted it was ‘not clear whether it happened or not, because how can you verify a video? you have a lot of fake videos now’.
the syrian president said he would only allow what he called an ‘impartial’ investigation into the events at Khan sheikhun to ensure it would not be used for ‘politicised purposes’.
russia, syria’s key ally, angered the Us, UK and France on Wednesday by vetoing a draft UN resolution that would have required the assad government to co-operate with an investigation.
Mrs May, who was visiting the royal Military academy sandhurst, criticised russian president Vladimir Putin for continuing to back the assad regime.
she said: ‘russia is on the wrong side of this argument but we are willing to work with russia to bring an end to the conflict in syria, to bring about a political solution in syria, but that political solution has to be without assad.’
the Prime Minister added that Mr Johnson had done a lot to achieve international consensus at this week’s G7 summit, enabling Us secretary of state rex tillerson to go to Moscow with a very clear message for Mr Putin.
the Kremlin said Mr Putin’s meeting with Mr tillerson had not produced any positive shift in russia-Us relations.
‘Buried them with our own hands’