Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Attack in Syria
A Syrian doctor treats a child Tuesday at a makeshift hospital in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib province after a suspected government chemical attack on the opposition-held town that killed dozens of people.
BEIRUT — A suspected government chemical attack in an opposition-held town in northern Syria killed dozens of people Tuesday, leaving residents gasping for breath and convulsing in the streets and overcrowded hospitals.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which operates through a network of activists on the ground, said at least 58 people died, including 11 children, in the early-morning attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which witnesses said was carried out by Sukhoi jets operated by the Russian and Syrian governments.
Doctors struggled to cope in the aftermath, which was reminiscent of a 2013 chemical assault that left hundreds dead and was the worst in the country’s six-year civil war.
After the 2013 attack, President Bashar Assad’s government agreed to destroy its chemical arsenal and join the Chemical Weapons Convention.
But member states of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have repeatedly questioned whether Assad declared everything. The widely available chemical chlorine was not covered in the 2013 declaration, and activists say they have documented dozens of cases of chlorine gas attacks since then.
The Syrian government has consistently denied using chemical weapons and chlorine gas, accusing the rebels of deploying it in the war instead.
Tuesday’s attack drew swift condemnation from world leaders, including the White House, which called it a “heinous” act that “cannot be ignored by the civilized world.” The United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for today in response to the strike, which came on the eve of a major international donors’ conference in Brussels on the future of Syria and the region, to be hosted by the European Union’s high representative, Federica Mogherini.
The Syrian government “categorically rejected” claims that it was responsible, saying it does not possess chemical weapons, has not used them in the past and will not use them in the future. It laid the blame squarely on the rebels, accusing them of fabricating the attack and trying to frame the Syrian government. The Russian Defense Ministry also denied any involvement
The attack occurred in Khan Sheikhoun, which lies south of the provincial capital of Idlib.
It was not immediately clear whether all those killed died from suffocation or were struck by other airstrikes that occurred in the area around the same time.
It was the third claim of a chemical attack in just over a week in Syria. The previous two were reported in Hama province, in an area not far from Khan Sheikhoun.
Doctors said in interviews that the symptoms they saw were far more serious than they would expect from chlorine, which Syrian government forces have used as a chemical weapon in the past.
It was not possible to independently verify the reports, but images from the area showed the bodies of at least a dozen men, women and children splayed across the ground between two houses. Video footage showed lifeless bodies wrapped in blankets and packed on the back of a truck.
Dr. AbdulHai Tennari, a pulmonologist who treated dozens of victims of Tuesday’s attack, said in a Skype interview, that doctors were struggling amid extreme shortages, including of the antidote used to save patients, Pralidoxem.
Dr. Mohammed Tennari, a radiologist and AbdulHaj Tennari’s brother, said Tuesday’s attack was more severe than previous ones in the province, most of which used chlorine cylinders.
“Honestly, we have not seen this before. The previous times the wounds were less severe,” he said. The doctor, who testified before the United Nations in 2015 about renewed Syrian government use of chemical attacks despite claims it has destroyed its stockpiles, said there was a chlorine smell after Tuesday’s attack, but it was mixed with another unknown “toxic gas which causes poison and death.”
Mohammed Hassoun, a media activist in the nearby town of Sarmin, where some of the critical cases were transferred, said doctors there also believed it was likely more than one gas. “Chlorine gas doesn’t cause such convulsions,” he said, adding that doctors suspect sarin was used.
Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization in Geneva, said in an emailed statement that the agency was gathering more information about Tuesday’s incident. The Syrian American Medical Society, which supports hospitals in opposition-held territory, also said it had sent a team of inspectors to Khan Sheikhoun and an investigation was underway.
Doctors and activists in rebel-held areas have accused the government of sharply increasing chemical attacks across Idlib, Aleppo and Hama provinces since the end of last year. A list of the dead compiled by activists Tuesday included 70 names.
In the Sheikh Khanoun attack, Samer al-Youssef, a local resident, described watching people run toward the homes of their extended families, wrenching open the doors to find them dead inside.
“We did our best, but we couldn’t save people. Around 30 percent of those who were brought to us were dead on arrival,” said Usama Darwish, a local doctor.
Although a nationwide cease-fire has technically been in place across Syria since late December, civilians and rebel groups now say it exists in name only.
“People are terrified. They don’t know where to go,” said Ahmad Rahhal, a 22-year-old activist. “They can’t cross into Turkey because the borders are closed, but if they stay in their houses, they will be attacked by bombs. What can they do?”
‘HEINOUS ACTIONS’
In Washington, the U.S. appeared to rule out plans to seek regime change in Syria as international condemnation grew.
The attack “is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world,” President Donald Trump said in a statement. “These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution,” he added, suggesting the Obama administration missed an opportunity that is now gone to push harder for the removal of the Syrian president.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer declined to say whether the United States planned additional steps beyond the condemnation.
“There is not a fundamental option of regime change as there has been in the past,” Spicer told reporters ahead of Trump’s statement, adding that the U.S. believes it would be better for the Syrian people if Assad were gone.
The comments are the latest signal that the U.S. acknowledges Assad’s ability to remain in power despite a six-year civil war that saw much of his country fall into rebel and terrorist hands before Russia intervened on his behalf in 2015. While then-President Barack Obama said “Assad must go” in 2011, the U.S. and an alliance of rebels it backed never mounted a successful campaign to overthrow him.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said Tuesday that the Trump administration’s recent statements that Assad’s fate was up to the Syrian people “only serve to legitimize the action of this war criminal.”
“Assad believes he can commit war crimes with impunity,” said McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. The question now confronting Washington, he said, “is whether we will take any action to disabuse him of this murderous notion.”
Trump’s top diplomat, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, assigned at least some blame to Russia and Iran, Assad’s most powerful allies. Tillerson called on both countries to use their influence over Assad to prevent future chemical weapons attacks. He noted Russia’s and Iran’s roles in helping broker a cease-fire through diplomatic talks that have occurred in the Kazakh capital of Astana.
“As the self-proclaimed guarantors to the cease-fire negotiated in Astana, Russia and Iran also bear great moral responsibility for these deaths,” Tillerson said. “We call upon Russia and Iran, yet again, to exercise their influence over the Syrian regime and to guarantee that this sort of horrific attack never happens again.”
Trump and Tillerson referred in written statements to a chemical weapons attack, rather than a suspected attack, suggesting that the U.S. has reached some degree of confidence about what took place in Idlib.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply disturbed” by the incident, even though the world body was not in a position “to independently verify reports” of the chemical attack, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. If confirmed, the attack “constitutes a serious violation of international law.”