CHEMICAL ATTACK IN SYRIA
Poison gas leaves dozens dead
Eleven young children were among at least 58 people killed in an apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria Tuesday that was followed by the bombing of a hospital where the victims were being treated.
The Syrian regime was accused of being behind the attack in the rebelheld town of Khan Sheikhoun, which appeared to be the deadliest chemical weapons strike in the country since 2013, and left residents writhing in agony in the streets.
Chlorine gas attacks are common in Syria but doctors said Khan Sheikhoun appeared to have been hit with far-deadlier sarin gas. They said there was no trace of the telltale smell of chlorine and that many of the wounded arrived in hospital with tiny pupils that were not responsive to light and with white foam around their mouths.
“Bodies of children, women and men that don’t show a drop of blood and everyone is suffocated — even birds fell from the sky, dead,” a member of the Syrian opposition told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
Hours after the poison gas canisters were first dropped, a clinic in the town was bombed by aircraft, bringing rubble and chaos down on some of the survivors and the doctors struggling to treat them. The killings were the largest mass-scale atrocity in Syria since Donald Trump took office and came just days after his administration said that removing Bashar Assad from power was no longer a priority for the U.S.
The White House called the attack “reprehensible” and said it “cannot be ignored by the civilized world,” but also blamed Barack Obama for failing to enforce his “red line” against chemical weapons in Syria. “These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, adding that the U.S. must face the “political reality” that Assad was in power in Syria and unlikely to be removed.
The UN Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss the attack but expectations are low that the council will take action given Russia’s policy of using its veto to protect the Syrian regime.
The Syrian military said it “categorically denies” responsibility for the attack while Russia also said it had not carried out any strikes in the area.
“WHILE WE CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE TERRIBLE SITUATION, IT IS CLEAR THAT THIS IS HOW BASHAR AL-ASSAD OPERATES: WITH BRUTAL, UNABASHED BARBARISM.” — U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE REX TILLERSON
Idlib province, where the strike took place, is almost entirely controlled by the Syrian opposition. Tuesday’s attack began at around 6.30 a.m. local time as most people in the town of 50,000 were still in their beds.
The street cats were the first to die in the moments after the chemical gas started to spread but soon people in Khan Sheikhoun also began to writhe in pain and gasp for breath.
“When the attack happened the sound was not so loud and it seemed ordinary to us because we’ve been through six years of war,” said Samer al-Yusuf, a father of four. “But after a few minutes we began to get messages on our mobiles that something dangerous and unexpected had happened.”
The town had no preparations or training for a chemical attack and many of those killed were rescuers who ran to help friends and family only to be caught in the gas themselves. Warnings blared from mosque loudspeakers for people to stay away but many rushed to the scene anyway.
Rescuers stripped the wounded of their clothes and hosed them with cold water to try to disperse the chemicals.
Yusuf arrived in the town centre at around 8 a.m. to find wounded people still lying in the street, unable to scream in pain because they could not draw breath. “They couldn’t talk, they couldn’t move, they couldn’t breathe. Most of them were women and children,” he said.
In houses closest to where the gas canisters fell whole families were found dead in their homes, he added.
A Syrian opposition journalist rushed to a hospital in Khan Sheikhoun to cover the treatment of the wounded but as he began his report warplanes raced overhead and struck the clinic. His camera captured parts of the roof collapsing, then everything went dark.
Opposition officials said five people were killed at the hospital and that the attack put it out of commission, forcing doctors to send gas victims to other area hospitals.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the overall death toll at 58 but the Syrian opposition said it might be closer to 100.
The attack appeared to be the deadliest since August 2013, when the Syrian regime killed hundreds of people with chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb, bringing the U.S. to the brink of a military intervention.
Obama called off the strikes after a deal was reached under which Syria would hand over its chemical weapon stockpiles. Although the regime did hand over some weapons in 2014 chemical attacks have continued regularly since then.
John McCain, the hawkish Republican senator, said the Assad regime was emboldened by comments from Rex Tillerson, the U.S. secretary of state, who said it was up the Syrian people to decide what happened to Assad. “Bashar al-Assad and his friends the Russians take note of what America says. I’m sure they took note of what our secretary of state said just the other day,” he said.