Father watched twins choke to death as poison took hold

ABDULHAMID AL-YOUSSEF sobbed as he carried his infant twins, wrapped in matching white shrouds, to their final resting place.

Ahmad and Aya, nine months old, died on Tuesday morning in a chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib, northern Syria, along with Mr Youssef ’s wife Dalal and 16 other members of his family.

Yesterday he had to bury them all in an unmarked mass grave.

The 29-year-old supermarket cashier had been at work when the air strike hit close to his home just after 6.30am. When his wife called to tell him what had happened, he rushed home to be with them.

They appeared to be fine, but as a precaution he took them all down to the basement of a nearby building in case of another strike.

It was only then, an hour later, that they began displaying symptoms.

“The family was all waiting down there and were safe, but then they started choking,” Mr Youssef ’s cousin, Alaa, told The Daily Telegraph. “The twins suddenly began shaking and struggling to breathe. Then he watched the chemicals take hold of his wife, then his brother, nieces and nephews.

“Everyone died down there in the basement. They didn’t have time to get to the hospital.”

Mr Youssef hugged both children, who looked peaceful in death, one final time before laying them in the ground. Apart from a bruise on Ahmad’s cheek there was no obvious sign of injuries.

“Chemical attacks leave no marks,” said Dr Mamoun Najem, a doctor at Al-Rahma Hospital in Idlib who treated the victims. “It’s a silent killer that works its way through the body slowly.”

He saw dozens of patients arrive that morning and into the afternoon. He says he has never seen such severe cases of poisoning before.

“Their pupils were as small as pinpricks, their skin was cold. They were unresponsive like zombies,” he said.

A nurse at the hospital, who did not

wish to give his name, said: “The smell reached us here in the centre; it smelled like rotten food. We’ve received victims of chlorine before – this was completely different.

“Victims had vomit from the nose and mouth, a dark yellow colour, sometimes turning to brown. They had paralysis of their respiratory functions – children were dying faster than adults because of this.”

Western intelligence agencies are hoping to conduct biological tests on survivors to compare against specimens of the chemical sarin taken from the Syrian military four years ago. There is growing suspicion that the government did not declare a portion of its sarin stockpile to United Nations inspectors, who supervised the surrender of its supplies.

The regime did so under a deal, brokered with the help of President Bashar al-Assad’s Russian allies, to help avert threatened military action by the United States after a chemical attack on the Damascus suburbs in 2013 killed up to 1,300 people.

Footage of the aftermath of Tuesday’s attack, which shows victims convulsing, struggling to breathe, and foaming from the mouth, has shocked and outraged the world.

The death toll reached 86 yesterday, including 30 children, making it the deadliest chemical assault since 2013.

Idlib governorate’s medical authority released an updated list of the dead yesterday. The youngest of the Youssef family was nine months old, the eldest was 68. The number was expected to rise further, however, as many are believed to have died in their homes and are yet to be taken to the hospitals to be counted.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the symptoms victims displayed were consistent with exposure to a category of chemicals that includes nerve agents.

“The likelihood of exposure to a chemical attack is amplified by an apparent lack of external injuries reported in cases showing a rapid onset of similar symptoms, including acute respiratory distress as the main cause of death,” it said.

Neither side denied there had been a chemical attack, however Russia claimed a Syrian government air strike had hit a rebel chemical weapons warehouse, while the US and UK pointed the finger solely at President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Hasan Haj Ali, a senior rebel commander, called the Russian assertion “a lie”, saying the rebels did not have the capabilities to produce chemical weapons and there were no military positions in the area bombed, either.

The Daily Telegraph spoke to witnesses to reconstruct Tuesday’s events. The attack happened around 6.32am and hit Corniche Street in a northern neighbourhood of Khan Sheikhoun.

“The sound of the explosion was not what we are used to. I thought that this one hadn’t exploded, because of the thump sound it made, not an explosion sound,” one witness said.

Alaa al-Youssef said he heard planes circling above before they dropped their load 300ft from where he was standing. The wind had been blowing west and away from Mr Youssef ’s house, but had it not been he believes he would almost certainly be dead.

The regime says it has no reason to attack Khan Sheikhoun, which is seven miles from the nearest frontline. Its opponents say the same.

Experts say it is doubtful that rebels had the finances or materials to manufacture the toxic substance and would have been able to do so without attracting attention. And, unlike the regime, rebels are not known to have used sarin gas in any attack to date.

“There are no warehouses, no factories anywhere in Khan Sheikhoun,” Mr Youssef told The Telegraph. “There aren’t even any fighters, just civilians who are trying to survive. The opposition would never bomb its own people,” he said.