SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS
THE images showed lifeless children – wrapped in simple white cloths, their pale faces unmarked by any wound – lined up shoulder to shoulder in a vivid demonstration of an attack in which activists say the Syrian regime killed up to 1300 people with toxic gas.
The Syrian Government adamantly denied using chemical weapons in an artillery barrage targeting suburbs east of Damascus on Wednesday, calling the allegations ‘‘absolutely baseless’’.
The US, Britain and France demanded that a team of UN experts already in the country be granted immediate access to investigate the claims.
Videos and photos showed row upon row of bodies, wrapped in white shrouds, lying on a tile floor, including more than a dozen children.
There was little evidence of blood or conventional injuries and most appeared to have suffocated.
Survivors of the purported attack, some twitching uncontrollably, lay on gurneys with oxygen masks covering their faces.
Activists and the opposition leadership gave widely varying death tolls, ranging from 136 to 1300.
But even the most conservative tally would make it the deadliest alleged chemical attack in Syria’s civil war.
For months now, the rebels, along with the United States, Britain and France, have accused the Syrian Government of using chemical weapons in its campaign to try to snuff out the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad that began in March 2011.
The regime and its ally, Russia, have denied the allegations, pinning the blame on the rebels.
The murky nature of the purported attacks, and the difficulty of gaining access to the sites, has made it impossible to verify the claims.
After months of negotiations, a UN team finally arrived in Damascus on Monday to begin its investigation into the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria.
But the probe is limited to three sites and seeks only to determine whether chemical agents were used, not who unleashed them.
The White House said the US was ‘‘deeply concerned’’ by the reports, and spokesman Josh Earnest said the Obama Administration had requested that the UN ‘‘urgently investigate this new allegation’’.
A year ago, President Barack Obama called chemical weapons a ‘‘red line’’ for potential military action, and in June, the US said it had conclusive evidence that Assad’s regime had used chemical weapons against opposition forces.
But the possibility of intervention seemed ever smaller after General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a letter this week that the administration was opposed to even limited action because it believed rebels fighting the Assad government would not support American interests.
Russia decried Wednesday’s reports as ‘‘alarmist’’. Foreign Min- istry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich denounced an ‘‘aggressive information campaign’’ laying full blame on the Syrian Government as a provocation aimed at undermining efforts to convene peace talks between the two sides.
Syria is said to have one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin.
A pharmacist in the town of Arbeen who identified himself as Abu Ahmad said he attended to dozens of wounded people in a field hospital after the shelling on Zamalka and Ein Tarma.
He said many were moved to Arbeen.
The bodies of 63 of the dead had signs of a chemical attack, he said, though he could not confirm this.
‘‘Their mouths were foaming, their pupils were constricted, and those who were brought in while still alive could not draw their breaths and died subsequently,’’ he said via Skype.
‘‘The skin around their eyes and noses was greyish.’’
Activists in nearby Zamalka told Abu Ahmed that an additional 200 people died in that town on Wednesday.
Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, denied government troops used chemical agents, calling the activists’ claim a ‘‘disillusioned and fabricated one whose objective is to deviate and mislead’’ the UN mission.