U.N. pins chemical attack on Syrian military

United Nations investigators added their voices on Wednesday to a mountain of evidence of the Syrian military’s responsibility for a chemical attack on a rebel-held town five months ago that left villagers foaming at the mouth and gasping for breath.

A U.N. Commission of Inquiry monitoring the six-year conflict in Syria said that Sukhoi 22 aircraft operated by the Syrian air force carried out the attack on the village of Khan Sheikhoun early on April 4. It killed at least 83 people, injured close to 300 others, and prompted President Donald Trump to order dozens of cruise missile strikes on the airfield from which the jet fighters had launched their attack.

The panel’s findings are the first authoritative statement to unequivocally pin responsibility for the attack on the Syrian government. Moreover, the panel said that Khan Sheikhoun was the site of just one of at least 20 chemical weapons attacks carried out from March 2013 to March 2017 by government forces. (The number of reported, but not confirmed, uses of chemical weapons is vastly higher.)

The U.N. panel based its conclusion on interviews with 43 victims and witnesses of the attack, logs of aircraft movements, analysis of satellite and photographs and the findings of a fact-finding mission set up by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which analyzed medical samples from victims of the attack.