Syrian envoy: Investigators wait on U.N.
Regime, Russians accused of slowing poison-gas probe
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian media outlets said international chemical-weapons inspectors on Tuesday entered the town of Douma, where a suspected gas attack was carried out earlier this month, but a Syrian diplomat said later that only a U.N. security team visited the Damascus suburb.
The reported attack led to Western airstrikes against the Syrian government over the weekend.
Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, told the Security Council that the U.N. team went to Douma to determine whether investigators from the international chemical-weapons watchdog could safely visit the site. If the team decides “the situation is sound,” the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will start work there today, Ja’afari said.
Ja’afari said the chemical-weapons watchdog’s staff has been working in Damascus, including listening to statements from some witnesses about the purported attack.
On Monday, watchdog Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu said Syrian and Russian authorities had blocked inspectors from going to Douma and instead offered them 22 people to interview as witnesses. The team arrived in Damascus on Saturday.
Journalists in Damascus were prevented by government minders from contacting the watchdog’s inspectors, and The Hague-based organization refused to comment on “operational details regarding the Douma deployment.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was the “obligation of the Syrian government to provide all the conditions for [the chemical-weapons inspectors] to work without any restrictions.”
British Prime Minister
Theresa May accused the Syrian government and its ally Russia of trying to cover up evidence and obstruct the investigation.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is investigating reports that Syrian loyalist troops deployed barrel bombs filled with chemical weapons on April 7 in Douma, the largest city in the one-time rebel-held enclave of eastern Ghouta.
The munitions, normally filled with explosives and metal detritus and dropped from helicopters, struck buildings where civilians had taken shelter, killing at least 40 people and leaving about 500 others with symptoms including breathing difficulties, skin discoloration, eye irritation and foaming at the mouth.
Less than two days after the attack, the Army of Islam rebels surrendered the town, which was the last rebel stronghold in eastern Ghouta.
Western nations insisted, after what was said to be analysis of open-source evidence, that chemical weapons had been deployed and that Syrian government troops were to blame. Then, on Saturday, the U.S., France and Britain bombarded sites they said were linked to Syria’s chemical-weapons program.
Journalists were eventually allowed access to Douma on Monday. The Associated Press spoke to survivors and witnesses who described being hit by gas, fainting, and discovering their relatives had died with foam bubbling around their mouths.
The Syrian government and Russia have denied using chemical weapons. At one point, Russian officials claimed the attack in Douma had been staged by Britain, an accusation that Peter Wilson, the nation’s envoy to the chemical-weapons watchdog, denied as ludicrous.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova on Tuesday dismissed allegations that Russia was trying to hamper the chemical-weapons inspectors, saying Moscow strongly supports their mission to Douma.
Meanwhile, Alexander Rodionov of the Russian miliers tary’s chemical-weapons protection unit said its experts found chlorine and components for producing mustard gas at a rebel laboratory in Douma. He said the canister with chlorine was similar to one shown in images released by activists in the days after April 7.
The U.N. team’s visit to Douma occurred hours after Syrian media outlets reported airstrikes Tuesday on government military installations in the central Homs region and the suburbs of Damascus, but the military later said a false alarm had set off air-defense systems.
Explosions were heard in the areas of the two bases, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict via a network of sources in the country. But it said no missiles landed inside the bases.
CRITICISM FROM RUSSIA
On Tuesday night, Russia again quarreled with the U.S. and its Western allies over Syria, saying the airstrikes set back any political negotiations to end the country’s seven-year civil war.
The exchange came Tuesday as U.N. Security Council gathered to discuss Syria for the sixth time in nine days.
Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the council that not even a day after the airstrikes, the U.S., France and Britain circulated a draft U.N. resolution calling for an urgent resumption of negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition as well as an independent body to assess blame for chemical attacks.
“Before airstrikes, we noted the readiness of the Syrian government to participate in the Geneva negotiations,” Nebenzia said. “Now, these efforts have been set back considerably.”
Kelley Currie, the deputy U.S. ambassador for economic and social affairs, accused Russia of calling the council meeting as part of its “messaging campaign to try to distract from the atrocities committed by the Assad regime.”
Separately, Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Western strikes had violated international law and set back the peace process, the Kremlin said Tuesday. Merkel later said she plans to meet with Putin in the “foreseeable future” for a direct exchange on the “number of issues we have in front of us.”
French President Emmanuel Macron defended the military action in a speech to the European Parliament.
He spoke of the “outrage by images we’ve seen of children, women who died of a chlorine attack.”
“Do we sit back, do we defend [human] rights by saying, ‘Rights are for us, principles are for us, and realities are for others?’ No, no!” the French leader said Tuesday. “Three countries have intervened, and let me be quite frank: This is for the honor of the international community.”
May, meanwhile, continued to take flak from opposition quarters for not seeking the backing of parliament before joining the U.S.-led missile strikes. She told lawmak-
that the lives of British troops would have been put at risk if the element of surprise had been compromised.
RESIDENTS SPEAK OUT
Residents of Douma were packed into underground shelters during the bombardment when the gas began to spread, several Syrians said in interviews. Suddenly, panic ensued.
As shouts of “chlorine, chlorine!” rang out, some ran into the night and fainted in the street. Others climbed to rooftops, hoping they’d be safer in positions above the gas. Dozens didn’t make it out at all, some stumbling on stairwells, out of breath, where they were later found dead.
The bodies were still there the next morning, strewn around the buildings, including toddlers and young children.
The Associated Press spoke to rescuers, medics and numerous residents of Douma for their accounts of what took place. Some were reached in rebel-held areas in northern Syria where they were evacuated after the attack, while others were still in Douma.
They spoke of at least two buildings with people sheltering in basements that were overwhelmed with gas so strong that it was hard to breathe hundreds of yards away.
More than 40 people were killed, many of them children, according to medics and opposition activists in the town. The World Health Organization said an estimated 500 patients exhibited symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals, including respiratory failure.
The U.N.-mandated Independent International Commission on Syria has documented more than 30 chemical attacks in Syria between 2013 and the end of 2017 — at least 25 of them carried out by the Syrian military, the commission says. For the rest, it had insufficient evidence to determine the perpetrator. Most involved chlorine gas, usually causing only a few injuries.
But in this case, it appeared the gas hit dozens of people crammed into confined spaces, huddling away from the bombs outside.
An AP team visited the site on a Syrian government-organized tour Monday, including
a two-room underground shelter where one resident said his pregnant wife and two young daughters were among the dozens killed.
A strange smell lingered, nine days after the attack.
Information for this article was contributed
by Bassem Mroue, Philip Issa,Zeina Karam,Aya Batrawy,Michael Corder, Vladimir Isachenkov and Sarah El Deeb of The Associated Press; by Nabih Bulos and Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles
Times; and by Dana Khraiche of Bloomberg News.