Kuwait denounces massacre in Syria
SYMPTOMS CONSISTENT WITH NERVE AGENT...TOLL AT 72 World divided on fixing blame
BRUSSELS, April 5, (Agencies): The State of Kuwait on Wednesday condemned in strong terms the ugly crime in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, called on the international community to intervene and halt Syrians’ blood-spilling and prosecuting “officials responsible for such crimes.” Addressing “the Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region,” Kuwaiti First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah stated, “we are holding this crucial meeting which calls for alleviating the humanitarian hardships suffered by the brotherly Syrian people.
“We meet here while pictures of the ugly massacre that happened yesterday in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib still vivid in our consciousness. The State of Kuwait strong denounces this criminal action, renews the call upon the international community to implement relevant international resolutions related to protecting the brotherly Syrian people, putting an end to the cycle of violence and blood shedding in Syria, while emphasizing the necessity to bring officials responsible for such crimes to justice,” Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled stressed.
Since end of the London conference, where Kuwait pledged $300 million at a rate of $100 million each year between 2016 and 2018, it had honored its pledge for 2016.
Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled indicated that Kuwait had honored its financial obligations for the Syrians when Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) inked memoranda of understanding with the countries hosting the refugees — namely Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Turkey — for funding projects in health, educational and utility sectors.
Relieves
Moreover, Kuwait had provided some $29 million to international agencies, which relieves the Syrian peoples in their home country, and the neighboring ones, he said.
It will honor its pledges for 2017 and 2018 by providing more than $600 million for infrastructural projects in countries neighboring Syria, in addition to $58 million to relief agencies operating on the ground, the first deputy premier and foreign minister added.
Elaborating, he indicated that Kuwait Foundation for Advancement of Science had secured more than 9,000 teaching scholarships for the refugees in the countries around Syria.
The Syrian crisis which has entered its seventh year is tantamount to a bloody humanitarian catastrophe that has claimed more than 400,000 lives, along with some 12 million others who have turned either displaced or refugees, “thus casting a shadow not only on the internal conditions in Syria and neighboring countries but also on various states across the globe, undermining international security and stability,” Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled said.
Aware of the volume of this humanitarian disaster, the State of Kuwait had hosted three international conferences for donors to provide humanitarian aid for the Syria, in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
Moreover, Kuwait had cochaired the fourth international conference for states pledging assistance for the Syrians in London in February 2016.
Aid
Total Kuwaiti aid for the Syrians in the four conferences had reached $6.6 billion, he confirmed, while urging other nations that have not paid their pledged contributions to do so.
Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled said that since the first pledging conference that was held in Kuwait, the country has shouldered its responsibility towards the international community and to the Syrian people.
“We were hoping that the only pledging conference for the crisis would be that of Kuwait in 2013, but unfortunately today we are obliged to organise many other pledging conferences and we reached the fifth one,” he told a news conference after the first session of the international conference on Syria in Brussels today.
He noted that this protracted crisis has spilled over to the neighboring countries and many UN reports draw our urgent need to access swiftly the beneficiaries within Syria and also to extend assistance and help to neighbouring countries who host a great number of refugees, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
“Along with this humanitarian assistance we also need a development programme in order to upgrade the capacities of
infrastructures like electricity, energy, roads,” he said.
“We need to work on the political track in order to allow the Syrian people to sit around the negotiating table and provide for security and stability. These were the main topics that we were able to talk about this morning,” he added.
Blame
As the world continues to react to the recent tragedy at Khan Sheikhoun in Syria, several global players, involved in the Syrian conflict, could not seem to agree on who is to blame for the attack which involved the use of chemical weapons.
On one hand, the Syrian regime and Russia were casting the blame on certain “groups” which were storing some dangerous and hazardous materials in warehouses in Idlib governorate, implying that they were to be blamed for the attack.
On the other hand, the international community is expressing condemnation left and right, saying that the Assad regime — backed by Russia and other allies — should be held responsible for the attack that left over a 100 people dead while some 300 suffered from serious injuries.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov, the Syrian regime’s air force was targeting strongholds for the rebels in Idlib who were apparently housing some dangerous materials used in chemical weapons.
The spokesman said that Russian experts have proved, time and time again, that rebels in Aleppo, as well as in Idlib, were housing materials that could be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.
In Moscow, Interfax news agency quoted anonymous diplomatic sources as saying that a draft resolution, prepared by the US, France and the UK at the Security Council denouncing the attack, was “provocative”, affirming that more time for investigation should be allocated to determine who really was behind the chemical weapons assault.
As if matters could not become any worse, the Syrian regime affirmed that it resumed the bombardment of rebel held areas in Khan Sheikhoun, which might result in more death and destruction.
Meanwhile, Turkey confirmed that chemical weapons were used in the Khan Sheikhoun assault.
Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag said in a statement while visiting
Erzurum city east of Turkey that there were strong evidence that chemical weapons were used, revealing that some 32 individuals wounded in the attack were transferred to hospitals in Turkey to receive treatment for gas poison.
Though efforts for peace in Syria are seemingly being carried out in the Brussels’ Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region, the facts on the ground all point to the continuous bloodshed in Syria in which the innocent unfortunately are paying the highest price.
The Syrian army jet that hit the town of Khan Sheikhoun at dawn dropped three conventional bombs and a fourth one that made little sound at impact but produced a cloud of white smoke, according to an activist observing from a nearby hilltop.
Hussam Salloum, a volunteer with an air raid warning service in rebelheld areas, said the Sukhoi-22 that attacked on Tuesday approached at low altitude, leaving behind three columns of dark smoke and the white cloud nearer to ground level.
“The smoke was white and thick,” he told Reuters from Khan Sheikhoun. “The smoke began to spread out across the town, until there was a layer over the town,” he said, sending a video filmed from an observation point that showed the plumes of smoke.
The Syrian government has strongly denied launching a chemical attack on the town. While Western states have accused Damascus, the Syrian government’s Russian allies say the deaths were the result of a Syrian air strike on a rebel arms depot where chemical weapons were being produced. Rebels deny this.
At least 72 people, many of them children, were killed by what the United States believes was sarin gas, in the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since the same nerve agent killed hundreds of people in a rebel-held area near Damascus in 2013.
Some of the dead, including children, showed no visible injuries, indicating the gas had killed them in their beds, said Mouin Abed al-Menem, a doctor who treated several victims.
Rescue workers found the bodies of a woman and two children on Wednesday in a cave where they had been sheltering, according to the civil defence emergency service that operates in rebel-held areas.
“The pilot carried out the bombing in one go, four bombs together,” said Salloum, who said he observed the raid from about 1.5 km (one mile) away and used walkie-talkies to alert rescue workers.
The service he works for includes a network of volunteers who track aircraft movements and radio traffic in
order to warn of potential air strikes, Salloum said.
“We discovered it was toxic gas from a civil defence worker who went to the place quickly,” he added. “He told us there was an unusual smell. Less than a minute later, he told us he was dizzy and fainting. We lost contact with him.”
Twenty of the dead were children, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The explosions woke up civil defence worker Khaled al-Nasr just after 6:30 am (0330 GMT). He arrived at the scene to find several of his colleagues suffering from the effects of the gas.
“We saw everyone was on the ground. People were squirming. Some had foam coming out of their mouths. We started picking people up,” Nasr said. Shortly after arriving, he too felt a burning sensation in his eyes but kept working until he was unable to continue. “I couldn’t breathe,” he said.
Rescue workers undressed victims and doused them with water. “Immediately, apply water, then get them out,” he said.
Pressure
France urged Russia on Wednesday to exert stronger pressure on the Syrian government to end the country’s sixyear-long war after a poison gas attack killed scores of people, and called on the United States to seriously commit to finding a solution to the conflict.
Western countries blamed President Bashar al-Assad’s armed forces for the attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in a rebel-held area of northern Syria hit by government air strikes.
The 15-member United Nations Security Council was briefed on the attack on Wednesday.
“We’re talking about war crimes,” French UN Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters ahead of the briefing.
“We urge Russia to exert much stronger pressure to the regime ... Frankly we also need an America that is seriously committed to a solution in Syria and that puts all its weight behind it,” he said.
Speaking in the council, British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft asked Russia: “What is your plan? What is your plan to stop these horrific senseless attacks? We had a plan and we had the support and you rejected it to protect Assad.”
In February, Syrian ally Russia, backed by China, cast its seventh veto to protect Assad’s government from council action, blocking a bid by Western powers to impose sanctions over accusations of chemical weapons attacks.
Rycroft said those vetoes sent Assad a message of encouragement and Tuesday’s
attack was “the consequence.”
“The UK delegate ... is openly distorting the position of China, this is not to be tolerated,” China’s UN Ambassador Liu Jieyi said, adding that Rycroft was “abusing the Security Council, doing so will not be in the interests of the Syrian people.”
An investigation by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found Syrian government forces were responsible for three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 and that Islamic State militants had used mustard gas.
The United States, Britain and France have proposed a Security Council resolution to condemn the latest chemical weapons attack, and push Syria to provide an international inquiry with flight plans and logs for Tuesday, the names of all helicopter squadron commanders and access to air bases.
Russia described the draft resolution as “unacceptable.” Council diplomats said it could be put to a vote as early as Wednesday afternoon.
Assad had agreed in 2013 to give up his chemical arsenal under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States.
UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Kim Won-soo told the Security Council on Wednesday that all Syria’s declared chemical materials and equipment have been removed or destroyed.
“For the past three years the OPCW has worked with the Syrian Arab Republic to assess and verify their declaration. A number of outstanding issues related to Syria’s declaration remain open,” he told the council.
Eager to show strength after a major provocation, President Donald Trump is forcefully denouncing a chemical attack he blames on Syrian President Bashar Assad but staying coy about how, if at all, the US may respond.
Trump split the blame Tuesday between Syria’s embattled leader and former president Barack Obama for the country’s worst chemical weapons attack in years. While calling the attack “reprehensible” and intolerable, Trump reserved some of his harshest critique for his predecessor, who he said “did nothing” after Assad in 2013 crossed Obama’s own “red line.”
“These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution,” Trump said.
Yet there were no indications Trump had a plan to prevent future atrocities that was any different from Obama’s. Asked how Trump might respond, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said he wasn’t yet ready to discuss it.
“We’ll talk about that soon,” Spicer added.