Syria systematically used chlorine bombs in Aleppo: Report

Syrian military helicopters systematically dumped canisters of chlorine gas, a banned weapon, on residential areas of Aleppo at least eight times late last year in the final weeks of the battle to retake the city from rebels, Human Rights Watch said in a detailed study released Monday.

The assertions in the study represent one of the most egregious uses of such outlawed weaponry in the war. It would amount to a new level of impunity by Syrian President Bashar Assad, who promised to never use chemical arms under an international treaty the government signed more than three years ago.

A UN panel that has been investigating reports of chlorine bombs and other chemical weapons in the Syrian war concluded last year that government forces had used them at least three times in 2014 and 2015. The panel is scheduled to provide an update this month.

Assad and his subordinates have repeatedly denied that their side has ever used chemical weapons, calling evidence fabricated or inconclusive.

But the Human Rights Watch report suggested that Syrian officials had not only disregarded the UN findings but also had decided to use chlorine bombs far more aggressively in the Aleppo campaign.

The report relied on interviews with emergency medical workers and other witnesses, photographs that include what appear to show spent gas canisters and analyses of video. The report acknowledged that “identifying with certainty the chemical used in the attacks without laboratory testing is difficult.”

There had been anecdotal and unverified accounts of haphazard chlorine bomb use in Aleppo, the northern Syrian city that became the focal point of the war in November and December. But the report’s conclusions pointed to a calculated government plan to use the poison indiscriminately to either kill inhabitants of contested neighbourhoods or drive them out.

“The pattern of the chlorine attacks shows that they were coordinated with the overall military strategy for retaking Aleppo, not the work of a few rogue elements,” said Ole Solvang, deputy emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.

In eight instances in which the report concluded chlorine bombs had been used, it said they were dropped in areas where government forces had planned to advance. The report said the attacks, from Nov. 17 to Dec. 13, when the combatants agreed to a ceasefire, killed at least nine civilians, including four children.

Chlorine, a common industrial chemical that can be fatally toxic, is not by itself illegal. But the Chemical Weapons Conventionforbids the use of toxins to kill or injure.

The report said there had been no evidence that military forces of Russia, which helped Assad’s side successfully retake Aleppo, were directly involved in any chlorine bomb attacks. Nonetheless, the report said, “as a military ally of Damascus, it benefited from the use of chemical weapons by Syria forces.”

Russia, which helped pressure Assad’s government to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013, has denounced any use of such weapons and voted with the United States and other UN Security Council members to ensure accountability if they were used in Syria.