Chemical weapons team gathers B6 Thursday, April 26, 2018 Imperial Valley Press more samples from Syrian town
BEIRUT (AP) — Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog made a second visit Wednesday to a Syrian town hit by an alleged chemical attack, collecting samples from a new location that will be sent to designated labs for analysis.
The suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 has sparked an ongoing clash of narratives between the West and the governments of Syria and its key ally, Russia. Damascus and Moscow insist there was no chemical weapons attack.
A Syrian filmmaker accused Russian state media of using images from the set of his 2016 movie to claim that the attack was staged by the West.
“I think it’s a desperate and cheap attempt by Russian TV to deny the obvious attack of Douma,” said Humam Husari, speaking of the images that appeared Sunday on two Russian state-run channels. Opposition activists and first responders who witnessed the attack in Douma, which was under rebel control at the time, say it was carried out by government forces and killed more than 40 people, many of them suffocating in an underground shelter where they were hiding from government airstrikes. The U.S., France and Britain also blamed the Syrian government and launched joint punitive airstrikes targeting suspected Syrian chemical weapons facilities on April 14.
Syria’s government and Russia have denied responsibility for the chemical attack. They have repeatedly blamed the rebels and opposition activists for possessing and deploying chemical weapons.
Russia had even said the attack was staged. On Wednesday, Russian diplomats said they plan to bring evidence of this to the Organization of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.