Assad defiant:
Syrian president denies he has any toxic agents stored as British experts confirm presence of nerve gas
By in Beirut BASHAR AL-ASSAD, the Syrian president, yesterday accused the US of fabricating last week’s chemical attack to justify a military strike, even as British investigators confirmed the use of toxic gas.
In his first interview since the attack on the northern opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun which left more than 80 dead and hundreds injured, Assad said his regime could not be responsible as they were no longer in possession of any chemical weapons.
“Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-inglove with the terrorists,” Assad told AFP news agency, referring to rebels who control the area. “They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack.
“It’s stage one, the play [they staged] that we saw on social network and TVs, then propaganda and then stage two, the military attack,” he said, questioning the authenticity of the video footage which drew international outrage.
“We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhoun. Were they dead at all?”
The attack on Khan Sheikoun prompted Donald Trump to order the first major military action of his presidency, launching dozens of cruise missiles at the airfield where it is believed the attack was launched.
Assad insisted that his regime gave up its entire stockpile to the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in 2013 after the last major chemical attack.
His government and its Russian backers claim the victims were killed by toxic agents from a rebel chemical arsenal hit by Syrian warplanes.
However, an American official coun- tered yesterday that US intelligence had intercepted communications from members of the regime and its chemical experts talking about preparations for the bombing of Khan Sheikhoun.
Nothing in the messages confirms that Russian officials had any knowledge ahead of the attack.
Assad’s comments came as a British delegation at the OPCW finished testing on samples from victims of the attack who had been treated in Turkey. They said yesterday that they had tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, or a “sarin-like substance”.
Theresa May said yesterday that Britain believed the Syrian regime carried out the chemical attack. “Apart from anything else, we believe it’s only the regime that has the capability to make such an attack,” the prime minister said in a televised statement.
A misdirected airstrike on Tuesday by the US-led coalition killed 18 allied fighters battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Raqqa, northern Syria, the US military said yesterday.