Syria ‘gas attack’ kills dozens
• War monitoring group and local health authority blame government for alleged toxic air strikes in rebel-held area
A suspected gas attack, believed to be by Syrian government jets, killed at least 58 people including 11 children under the age of eight in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday, a war monitor and medical workers in the rebelheld area said.
A suspected gas attack, believed to be by Syrian government jets, killed at least 58 people including 11 children under the age of eight in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday, a war monitor and medical workers in the rebel-held area said.
A Syrian military source strongly denied the army had used any such weapons.
The attack caused people to choke or faint, and some had foam coming out of their mouths, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, citing medical sources who described it as a sign of a gas attack.
The air strikes on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in the south of rebel-held Idlib, also wounded more than 60 people, said the Observatory, a British-based war monitoring group.
“This morning [Tuesday] at 6.30am, warplanes targeted Khan Sheikhoun with gases, believed to be sarin and chlorine,” said Mounzer Khalil, head of Idlib’s health authority, adding that the attack had killed more than 50 people and wounded 300.
“Most of the hospitals in Idlib province are now overflowing with wounded people,” he said.
Warplanes later struck near a medical point where victims of the attack were being treated, the Observatory and civil defence workers said.
The civil defence, also known as the White Helmets — a rescue service that operates in opposition areas of Syria — said jets struck one of its centres and the nearby medical point.
This would mark the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since sarin gas killed hundreds of civilians in Ghouta near Damascus in August 2013. Western states said the Syrian government was responsible, while Damascus blamed rebels.
MILITARY DENIES
On Tuesday, the Syrian military source denied allegations that government forces had used chemical weapons, dismissing the accounts as rebel propaganda. The army “has not and does not use them, not in the past and not in the future, because it does not have them in the first place”, the source said.
A joint inquiry for the UN and the global chemical weapons watchdog has previously accused government forces of toxic gas attacks. France called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday’s suspected attack.
Photographs from Reuters showed people breathing through oxygen masks and wearing protection suits, while others carried the bodies of dead children, and corpses wrapped in blankets were lined up on the ground.
Activists in northern Syria circulated pictures on social media showing a purported victim with foam around his mouth and rescue workers hosing down near-naked children squirming on the floor.
The conflict pits President Bashar al-Assad’s government, helped by Russia and Iranianbacked militias, against a wide array of rebel groups, including some that have been supported by Turkey, the US and Gulf monarchies.
The Russian defence ministry said on Tuesday that Russian planes had not carried out air strikes on Idlib.
Syrian and Russian air strikes have battered parts of Idlib despite a ceasefire Turkey and Russia brokered in December, according to the Observatory. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the suspected attack, Turkish presidential sources said.
Idlib province contains the largest populated area controlled by the anti-Assad rebels — the nationalist Free Syrian Army groups and Islamist factions including Nusra Front.
Idlib’s population has ballooned, with thousands of fighters and civilians shuttled out of Aleppo city and areas around Damascus that the government has retaken in recent months.