Syrians brace for chemical attacks
Doctors in Aleppo scrambling to set up crude defences in desperate bid for protection
Terrified residents in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo are bracing for the possibility of a major chemical weapons attack while the international community wrestles with whether a military response is justified, based on evidence of such attacks so far.
Doctors in rebel-held territory have scrambled to set up decontamination tents outside 10 hospitals, stockpiled 20,000 ampoules of the antidote atropine and are handing out surgical masks to front line staff, said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of the Syrian American Medical Society, a volunteer organization providing emergency care in a series of underground clinics in northern Syria.
This week, U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said Washington was rethinking its opposition to arming the rebels. But after two suspected chemical attacks in the city in the past month, doctors in Aleppo have taken matters into their own hands.
“The medical community there is expecting another chemical weapon attack any minute,” said Sahloul, a critical care expert from Chicago.
Sahloul recently returned from the Turkish border, where he helped organize the preparations.
“I have no doubt in my mind the regime will use anything at their disposal to fight until the end.”
Late Friday night, U.S. officials speaking anonymously said Israel launched an airstrike overnight Thursday into Syria, apparently targeting a suspected weapons site.
But they said it did not appear that a chemical weapons site was targeted. (Israel has targeted weapons in the past that it believes are destined for the Lebanon-based Hezbollah.)
Sahloul, meanwhile, believes there have been seven chemical weapons attacks since last December, including two in Aleppo. Independent verification is difficult in Syria because access is restricted.
What is known is that on March19 an unidentified chemical hit the Khan al-Assal area south of Aleppo, killing dozens of people. The precise number is not known. The Syrian information minister accused rebels of firing a “rocket containing poison gases.” The opposition countered that it was a Scud missile with deadly chemicals.
A UN investigation team is expected to examine all the allegations of gas attacks, including that on Khan al-Assal, but it has not yet received permission to enter Syria.
More recently, on April 13, an attack involving another unidentified material struck the heavily foughtover Sheikh Maqsood neighbourhood in Aleppo. Sahloul said the chemical killed three members of one family, including an 18-monthold girl, and injured about five physicians who tried to help.
The symptoms reported by his network of doctors in both attacks included shortness of breath, bronchial spasms, respiratory failure, foaming at the mouth and convulsions. Some victims fell into a coma and died.
He said the injured at Sheikh Maqsood were given atropine, a treatment for organophosphate insecticides and nerve gases.
Still, Aleppo’s medical defences in the event of a chemical weapons attack are lacking. The surgical masks, for example, are disposable and made of paper: insufficient protection against the deadly chemicals, including sarin and mustard gas, which the Syrian government is believed to have in its arsenal.
The decontamination tents, too, are rudimentary, made from local material. A hose is connected to a shower head inside each tent to wash victims before they are given emergency treatment.
Doctors have distributed atropine ampoules to the public so they can protect themselves, said Yassir alHaji, a resident, speaking by phone from Aleppo.
“People are expecting more attacks because no one from the international community has reacted to the first one or the second,” he said. “I went to the houses that were gassed, and in 90 per cent of that area people have left. They are afraid, and ones who stayed say they have no choice because they had no money.”
No one is certain what Syria has in its arsenal. The production and use of chemical weapons are banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria has not signed. But that doesn’t leave Syria much legal wiggle room: production and use of chemical weapons is still forbidden under the Geneva Conventions.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based group, suspects Syria has “one of the most advanced chemical warfare capabilities in the Middle East,” with the capability to produce sarin, mustard gas and VX agent, plus an arsenal of Scud missiles, artillery shells and rockets capable of delivering the chemicals.
Sarin, developed as a weapon by the Nazis, and VX are both odourless and tasteless and kill within 10 minutes of exposure. Mustard gas is pale yellow and sometimes smells like onions or garlic.
To cut through the fog of war, Physicians for Human Rights, an advocacy group that documented Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against ethnic Kurds in 1988, has distributed fact sheets to Syrian physicians on how to identity and treat symptoms of chemical weapons and how to collect samples.
Establishing conclusive proof is not easy, said Susannah Sirkin, senior adviser with the organization.
Ideally, doctors assess symptoms and witness statements are taken. Biological samples are collected to be analyzed in independent laboratories, and the scene of the attack is photographed. “The challenge here would be like President Obama said: a proper chain of custody ideally from beginning to end with the best forensic evidence and people to document it at every step,” she said. “In the environment of a war it’s challenging, to say the least.” The analysis of chemical weapons is a highly specialized field. There are fewer than12 laboratories in the world with that capability. The U.S. and Britain have said they have limited evidence that sarin had been used — America suspects just two occasions — and the international community is demanding proof, something physicians are frantically trying to provide.
Rahim, who has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, has collected blood samples from four victims in the Khan al-Assal attack and passed them to the U.S. government via its embassy in Turkey.
Last Monday, he arrived in Saraqeb, in northern Idlib province, after another suspected chemical attack, which is believed to have killed at least one person.
Rahim said a small object shaped like a barbecue gas tank but no bigger than an adult’s hand hit farmer Ibrahim al-Ahmed’s house.
“The farmer said it was a strong, foul-smelling powder,” said Rahim told the Star from Reyhanli after speaking to al-Ahmed, who was brought to a Turkish hospital for treatment.
The farmer’s wife Maryam, 47, was killed. Rahim was collecting blood, urine, hair and clothing samples from her body, which will be sent to the U.S. government.
“I have no doubt the regime is using chemical weapons. People are skeptical because they want to be,” said Rahim. “In Syria we are beyond that discussion. We see the impact of it.”
Bashar Jaafari, the Syrian ambassador to the UN, accused rebels of spreading powder — “probably a kind of chemical material” — at Saraqeb.
Environmental evidence such as soil samples can be important too. But soil samples are difficult to assess because nerve gas evaporates quickly. However, in 1992, Sirkin and her team brought back soil and a piece of a bomb from northern Iraq, confirming that Saddam Hussein’s fighters had gassed Kurds four years earlier.
“That was unusual, that this soil sample contained this material such a long time later,” she said. “But there is so much we don’t know about how these chemicals act in different environments.”
For Aleppo’s civilians, the proof may come too late. Sahloul said the attacks have been so far on a small scale because Syrian President Bashar Assad is testing the international community’s resolve to act.
“If the regime sees no response, they will move to the next level,” he said.
“People have surrendered to their fate. They believe if they are going to be hit, they will be hit.” With files from Star wire services