Suspected gas attack kills dozens in Syria
Trump warns Assad of a ‘big price to pay’ in the apparent chemical bombardment. U.S. calls for U.N. meeting.
AMMAN, Jordan — Dozens of people were killed in an apparent poison gas attack on a suburb of Damascus as troops loyal to the government pressed an offensive to take back one of the last rebel-held bastions near the Syrian capital, opposition activists and aid groups said Sunday.
Doctors and first responders shared horrific images on social media of men, women and children they said had suffocated in their homes and in makeshift shelters during an intense bombardment Saturday night of the city of Duma, in the east Ghouta region. Some of the videos and photographs showed piles of glassy-eyed bodies, many with white foam filling their mouths and nostrils.
President Trump blamed the Syrian government and warned of a “big price to pay” in a series of tweets that also took aim at Russian President Vladimir Putin for backing his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, whom Trump called “Animal Assad.”
Trump’s condemnation of what he termed a “mindless CHEMICAL attack” raised the prospect of U.S. military retaliation almost exactly a year after the president ordered a cruisemissile strike on a Syrian air base following a sarin gas attack — a move that won him some of the highest foreign-policy praise of his presidency.
The United States and eight other countries — France, Britain, Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands, Kuwait, Peru and Ivory Coast — called for the
United Nations Security Council to meet Monday to discuss the reports of another chemical weapon attack in Syria.
“The Security Council has to come together and demand immediate access for first responders, support an independent investigation into what happened and hold accountable those responsible for this atrocious act,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said in a statement.
The Syrian government and its Russian allies, however, dismissed the accusations as rebel fabrications intended to win international support in the face of imminent defeat in Duma.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA, quoted an unidentified military source on Sunday as saying that “an army that is progressing quickly ... does not need to use any kind of chemical weapons.”
Rescue workers found at least 42 people who suffocated in their homes, according to the Syria Civil Defense, a team of first responders working in opposition areas, and the Syrian American Medical Society, a Washingtonbased relief organization that supports health facilities in the area.
About 500 others were brought to medical centers with symptoms indicative of exposure to a chemical agent, including difficulty breathing, foaming at the mouth, burning eyes and skin discoloration, the groups said in the statement. One person was pronounced dead on arrival, and six others died after they reached a clinic.
Members of the Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, said the attack was carried out by a Syrian government helicopter, which dropped “barrel bombs” filled with a chemical agent. Barrel bombs are typically built from oil drums or water tanks that are filled with explosives and metal detritus.
It was not immediately clear what kind of chemical agent might have been used. Local medics and rescue workers said some of the victims were emitting a “chlorine-like odor.” Others showed signs of exposure to an “organophosphate element,” a reference to chemicals found in insecticides and nerve agents.
Opposition activists and first responders described whole families found suffocated, and graphic images of the tiny slumped bodies of dead or dying children were widely circulated on social media.
In one video, a person is heard commenting off camera on the “powerful smell” as he and other activists race through a building searching for victims. The smell was so intense in places that first responders were unable to evacuate the bodies, the Syria Civil Defense said.
The authenticity of the images could not be independently verified. The Syrian government and its allies — including Russia and Iran-backed militias — have Duma surrounded, making it impossible for independent journalists and aid workers to access the city.
The suspected attack took place during a barrage of airstrikes and artillery and mortar fire that killed at least 56 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition watchdog based in Britain. The group could not confirm the use of chemical weapons but said at least 21 of the victims suffocated because of smoke inhalation in their basements.
“We’re talking about hundreds of airstrikes, rockets and mortars on a small area,” Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory group, said by phone Sunday. “People don’t have the ability to withstand this amount of smoke.”
The Syrian government has consistently denied the use of chemical weapons during seven years of grinding civil war.
A Syrian Foreign Ministry official was quoted by SANA as saying that the “claims of using chemical weapons have become a boring record that is unconvincing except to some of the nations that bargain on the blood of civilians and support terrorism in Syria.”
Damascus considers all rebels to be terrorists aided by its regional and international enemies.
The U.S. State Department issued a statement saying it was closely following the “disturbing reports ... regarding another alleged chemical weapons attack.”
“These reports, if confirmed, are horrifying and demand an immediate response by the international community,” it said.
The statement added that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons in the past “is not in dispute” but said Russia, a key backer of Assad, “ultimately bears responsibility for these brutal attacks.”
In addition to lashing out at Russia and Iran, Trump also singled out his predecessor, President Obama, for not attacking Assad after a sarin gas attack killed more than 1,000 people in the Ghouta region in 2013 — a supposed “red line” that, in lieu of a U.S.-led offensive, resulted in an eleventh-hour deal in which Damascus agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal.
“If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The Sand, the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal Assad would have been history!” Trump tweeted.
Last year, after another sarin attack killed nearly 100 people in the northern rebelheld town of Khan Sheikhoun, Trump ordered Tomahawk cruise missiles fired at a Syrian government air base where chemical weapons were said to have been stored.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday dismissed claims of chemical weapons use as “fake news.”
“It is necessary to once again caution that military intervention under false and fabricated pretexts in Syria, where the Russian servicemen stay at the request of the legitimate government, is absolutely unacceptable and may trigger the gravest consequences,” the ministry said, according to the Russian state news agency Tass.
More than 1,600 people have been reported killed in east Ghouta since Syrian government troops, backed by Russian air power, launched a ferocious campaign to take back the rebelheld enclave in February. Rebel forces have also fired rockets into densely populated neighborhoods of Damascus, spreading fear among its residents.
In recent weeks, the government had offered rebel factions in east Ghouta the now-standard deal it has extended to other besieged areas of the country, in which those who refuse to lay down their arms are granted safe passage to Idlib in Syria’s northwest.
Tens of thousands of people have since been bused there from the region, including fighters from Faylaq al Rahman and Ahrar al Sham, Islamist groups backed by Qatar and Turkey.
A similar deal was offered to the Army of Islam, the dominant faction in Duma, while granting fighters who wanted to remain in the city the chance to join an auxiliary force that would work alongside government troops, on the condition that they hand over their heavy weaponry.
In recent days, a temporary truce had taken hold in Duma, as a trickle of wounded fighters and civilians left the rebel bastion. And though hostilities resumed Friday, there had been reports on Saturday night of a deal to end the standoff.
On Sunday night, state media reported that buses had begun to mass in Duma ahead of a transfer that would see civilians and Army of Islam fighters go to Turkish-held areas in Syria’s north. There was no confirmation from the Army of Islam, but Qais Hassan, a Duma-based activist, said an agreement had been forged.
With the battle for east Ghouta all but finished, it was unclear what a chemical weapon attack would achieve for either side.
“If the government did it, it would be an effort to break the will of the rebels, a message telling them the war has ended, no one is here to save them, and they have to surrender,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.
If the rebels were responsible, he continued, it would be a last-ditch effort “to raise the ante on Assad and make him pay.”
Tobias Schneider, an independent security analyst who has been tracking the use of chemical weapons in Syria, said there have been numerous reports of the government using chlorine gas in east Ghouta and other rebel-held areas.
He was skeptical that the government would have anticipated the possibility of a punitive strike by the U.S., saying the only reason that this attack was drawing international opprobrium was because of the scale of the casualties.
“This is something the government has been doing consistently for well over five years now,” Schneider said. “If anything, it would be surprising if they stopped doing it.”