The New York Times, USA. Anne Barnard, Michael Gordon
Beirut, Lebanon. — On April 4, one of the worst chemical bombings in Syria's history turned the rebel-held northern region into a toxic zone, fueling international outrage over the government's growing impunity in the country's six years of war.
Western leaders, including President Trump, blamed the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and called on its backers, Russia and Iran, to prevent a repeat of what many have dubbed a "war crime."
According to eyewitnesses, doctors and rescue workers, dozens of people, including children, died - in agony, suffocation and foaming at the mouth - from inhaling poison that may have contained a nerve paralytic or other illicit drugs. chemical substances. They say the substance spread early in the morning after several bombs were dropped by military aircraft. Some rescuers felt unwell and fell next to the dead man.
Representatives of the opposition-run Ministry of Health in Idlib province, where the attack took place, reported 69 dead and published a list of names. Not everyone has yet been identified, and some humanitarian groups said at least a hundred people were killed.
The Assad government, which abandoned the use of chemical weapons after a large-scale chemical attack, which, according to the conclusions of American intelligence services, was behind his own forces, he denies the involvement of his army in the incident, as, in fact, every time when chemical munitions are used in Syria.
The Syrian military in a statement blamed the rebels for the incident and said it accused the army of using toxic weapons. every time they fail to achieve their sponsors' goals».
But only the Syrian military had the capability and motive to carry out an air attack like the one that struck rebels in the city of Khan Sheikhoun.
Russia has put forward a different explanation. Defense Ministry spokesman Major Igor Konashenkov said that Syrian warplanes struck a rebel storage facility containing toxic substances intended for use in chemical weapons.
According to witnesses to the attack, it all started before 7 am. Numerous photographs and videos posted online by activists and residents showed children and elderly people suffocating and unable to breathe or lying motionless in the mud, as well as rescuers tearing off victims' clothes and dousing them with water hoses. The bodies of at least ten children lay on the ground in a row or under blankets.
A few hours later, according to eyewitnesses, another airstrike hit a hospital with casualties who had recently been distributed to smaller clinics and maternity hospitals because an airstrike two days earlier had caused serious damage to the area's largest hospital.
The scale and brazenness of the attack threatened to further undermine the symbolic and frequently violated ceasefire imposed in parts of the country since Assad's troops, with Russian help, retook the northern city Aleppo, which fueled the Syrian leader's hopes of winning the war.
The attack was likely to slow down peace talks led by the United Nations in Geneva and Russia and Turkey in the Kazakh capital Astana.
Humanitarian groups skeptical of the chemical attack have demanded action from the UN Security Council, whose members have been paralyzed by division over who is responsible for the Syrian war almost since the conflict began in 2011.
On the night of April 4, Britain, France and the United States urged the Security Council to pass a resolution that would condemn the attack and oblige the Syrian government to provide international investigators with all logbooks, flight plans and the names of the commanders of air operations that took place including on Tuesday.
The draft resolution, negotiated between diplomats from the three countries on April 4, was later sent to all 15 members of the UN Security Council. It could be submitted to a vote as early as Wednesday.
For Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly decried what he called President Barack Obama's failures in Syria, the chemical weapons attack created a potential political dilemma and exposed a number of glaring contradictions in his own evolving position on Syria.
The White House called the attack a "reprehensible" act against innocent people, which the civilized world should not ignore.
At the same time, Trump's press secretary Sean Spicer condemned Obama for failing to fulfill his 2012 promise to establish a “red line,” which included military intervention in Syria if Assad used chemical weapons.
But in August 2013, Trump urged Obama not to intervene after the chemical weapons incident near Damascus, which American intelligence attributed to the Syrian military and which, according to the US government, killed more than 1,400 civilians, including hundreds of children.
"President Obama, don't attack Syria," Trump tweeted at the time. - There is no benefit to this, just a huge minus
The Trump administration, which would like to shift the focus in Syria solely towards the fight against the Islamic State (banned in the Russian Federation - editor's note), recently called Assad's retention in office a political reality, which drew strong condemnation from influential Republicans who believe that Assad needs to go.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who said that the fate of Bashar al-Assad " the Syrian people will decide", on April 4, sharply changed the tone of his statements, calling on Mr. Assad's allies in the form of Russia and Iran "to use their influence over the Syrian regime and provide guarantees that such horrific attacks will never happen again."
Russia has always insisted that it has no military role in the conflict. But a State Department official speaking at a briefing in Washington said Russian officials were only trying to evade responsibility because Russia and Iran were guarantors of the Assad government's intention to adhere to the ceasefire agreements at peace talks organized with the participation of the Kremlin in Astana.
Rescuers from a civil defense organization called the White Helmets note that many children were among the dead and wounded. Their own incident report reporter, Radi Saad, reported that the volunteers at the scene were unaware of the chemicals and five of them were injured from exposure to the substance.
Though gas attacks using chlorine and becoming commonplace in northern Syria, this one was fundamentally different, according to medical workers and witnesses to the tragedy. Chlorine gas attacks usually kill only a few people, mostly in confined spaces, and the gas itself dissipates quickly.
This time everything happened in the open air and took away much more lives. Symptoms varied, including the victims' pupils shrinking to the size of dots, indicating the presence of nerve agents and other illicit poisons. One doctor even published a video showing how the pupil becomes smaller in this case. Several people felt unwell just by touching the victims.
The health minister in Syria's interim government, Mohammad Firas al-Jundi, said via video that he visited the field hospital at 7:30 a.m. when more than a hundred wounded and sick people were brought in.
Patients lie in the corridors and on the floor of operating rooms, in the intensive care unit and wards, he said. - I saw more than 10 deaths caused by this attack.
Symptoms, he said, included suffocation; fluid in the lungs, with foam at the mouth; loss of consciousness; convulsions; and paralysis.
It's just terrifying,” he said. - The world knows and understands everything that is happening in Syria, and we are ready to provide forensic laboratory employees with evidence of the use of these gases
A 14-year-old resident of the attacked city, Mariam Abu Khalil, said the attack happened when she went to a Koranic exam scheduled for early morning due to the small number of bombings expected. On the way, she saw a plane drop a bomb on a one-story building just a few tens of meters away from her. In a telephone interview on the evening of April 4, she described the explosion as a yellow mushroom that stung her eyes. “It was like winter fog,” the girl said.
Hiding in her house nearby, she saw several residents arrive to help the wounded.
When they got out of the car, they immediately inhaled the gas and died,” she said.
It was the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since August 2013. Under threat of US retaliation, Mr Assad agreed to a US-Russian agreement to eliminate his country's chemical weapons program, which he had until then denied existing, and join the international treaty banning chemical weapons.
But the operation took longer than expected and raised questions about whether all materials were accounted for. The head of the international watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, complained in an internal report about Damascus' misleading statements and raised concerns about the possible presence of undeclared chemical weapons.
The UN-run organization has since found that Syrian authorities used chlorine gas as a weapon three times in 2014 and 2015, violating the treaty. Rebels, doctors and anti-government activists say there are numerous other chlorine attacks, including at least two in the past week that left a doctor killed in the line of duty.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons also accused the Islamic State of using banned mustard gas in Iraq and Syria. The area around the city of Khan Sheikhoun is controlled not by the Islamic State, but by other insurgents: al-Qaeda-linked militants and a variety of other insurgent groups.
If the chemical weapons attack is the work of the government, then the issue of government impunity will certainly be raised at a major international meeting in Brussels, where officials will discuss the feasibility of the European Union and other countries allocating billions of dollars to rebuild Syria under Mr. Assad.
In Syria, several dozen people died in Eastern Ghouta as a result of chemical attack which was allegedly carried out government troops, controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow and Damascus denied the fact of the chemical attack. US President Donald Trump blamed Iran, Russia and Vladimir Putin personally for the incident.
Photo: Halil el-Abdullah/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Residents of the Syrian city of Douma, located 10 kilometers from Damascus, were subjected to a chemical attack, several non-governmental organizations reported last Saturday, April 7. The attack occurred as Syrian government forces advanced on Ghouta, which at that moment was controlled by the Jaysh al-Islam group. The head of the White Helmets volunteer organization, Raid al-Saleh, claims that a sarin nerve gas bomb was dropped on Douma by a Syrian Air Force helicopter. According to another version, a chlorine bomb was used in Ghouta.
“As a result of the attack, 70 people suffocated, and several hundred more are still suffering,” the head of the White Helmets initially said. He later clarified that 150 people became victims of the attack. The opposition media center Ghouta reported 75 dead and a thousand injured as a result of the alleged attack. The Damascus hospital confirmed information about 70 dead. Doctors say they are treating people for symptoms consistent with exposure to nerve gas or chlorine gas.
“We are not speculating, we have seen the video. The foam at the mouth of people, the way their eyes looked, indicate that a chemical attack was carried out in Douma,” an official representative of the Higher Negotiating Committee, one of the influential organizations of the Syrian opposition, told the Kommersant newspaper.
Syrian state media accused the Jaysh al-Islam group of falsifications. “Jaish al-Islam terrorists are in a state of collapse and their media fabricated reports of a chemical attack to disrupt the advance of the Syrian army,” the government agency Sana said.
After the chemical attack in Syria, the White House decided to discuss the introduction of new sanctions against Russia. The first meetings on this issue will be held in the coming days, the Kommersant newspaper reported on April 9. Advisor to President Trump John Bolton will give a keynote address on the topic.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also held Moscow and Damascus responsible for the ongoing chemical attacks in Syria. He recalled that in 2013, Russia promised that the Syrian authorities would abandon chemical weapons, but “since 2014, the Assad regime has used chemical agents at least four times.”
On April 8, Donald Trump discussed the chemical attack in Syria with French President Emmanuel Macron. “The President of the French Republic strongly condemned the chemical attacks against the population of Douma in Eastern Ghouta,” according to a communique from the Elysee Palace, quoted by MIA Rossiya Segodnya. The two presidents "firmly condemned the horrific chemical weapons attacks in Syria and agreed that the Assad regime must be held accountable for its ongoing violations of human rights."
Following the chemical attack, nine countries called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the incident in Douma. Russia, in turn, proposed holding a meeting on April 9 on the topic “Threats to Peace and Security”, after which to discuss reports of a chemical attack in Syria.
In the early hours of Monday, April 9, a missile strike was carried out on the Syrian Tiyfor airbase (T-4) in Homs province, in which, information monitoring groups, 14 people were killed, including Iranian soldiers. The Russian state agency Rossiya Segodnya claims that no one was injured or killed during the attack, and Syrian air defenses repelled the airstrike. According to Reuters, air defenses shot down eight missiles.
Initially, Syrian state media blamed the missile on the United States, but the Pentagon denied this information. The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that the attack from Lebanese territory was carried out by Israel. “On April 9, from 03.25 to 03.53 Moscow time, two F-15 aircraft of the Israeli Air Force, without entering Syrian airspace, from Lebanese territory attacked the Tifor airfield with eight guided missiles,” the Ministry of Defense says.
Turkey strongly condemns the chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma (Eastern Ghouta province), the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said in a statement.
There is a strong suspicion that the Syrian regime, whose history of using chemical weapons is known to the international community, is behind the attack, the department noted.
“We expect the international community to respond to the attack and international organizations, especially the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, to begin investigating this incident immediately,” the ministry said.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry called on parties with influence on the Syrian regime to take the necessary steps to ensure an immediate end to such attacks.
Volunteers and rescuers reported that on April 7, a helicopter dropped a barrel of chemicals on the town of Duma in Eastern Ghouta, killing between 70 and 100 people. The Ghouta Media Center organization said the helicopter belonged to Syrian troops.
Douma is the last town in Eastern Ghouta held by rebels. It is under siege by Russian-backed Syrian government forces.
Nine countries have called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on an alleged chemical attack in Syria. The British Permanent Mission reported this.
This initiative was put forward by three permanent members of the Security Council - Great Britain, France and the United States, as well as Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Kuwait, Peru and Côte d'Ivoire.Prior to this, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that Paris calls for an urgent convening of the UN Security Council to discuss the situation in Eastern Ghouta.
Russia, in turn, proposed holding a meeting on Monday on the topic “Threats to Peace and Security.” It is expected to take place at 22:00 Moscow time. At the end of the meeting, the Security Council will discuss reports of a chemical attack in Syria.
A number of opposition Internet portals and the Qatari TV channel Al-Jazeera previously published reports citing militants about the use Syrian army in the city of Duma of chlorine, which allegedly killed several dozen civilians.
US President Donald Trump blamed Damascus for what happened and threatened that the organizers of the chemical attack would “pay dearly” for their actions. In turn, White House Security and Counterterrorism Advisor Thomas Bossert said that Washington is considering the possibility of striking Syria.
The Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Warring Parties denied reports of a chlorine bomb allegedly dropped by the Syrian Armed Forces in Douma and called the accusations against Damascus a fake. The center noted that they are ready to send chemical protection specialists to collect data that will confirm the fabricated nature of the statements.The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that the purpose of the rumors about the use of toxic substances by Syrian troops is to shield terrorists and justify possible forceful strikes from the outside.
Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov reported on March 13 that the Russian military has reliable information that militants in Eastern Ghouta are preparing a provocation to stage the use of “chemical weapons.” He noted that there is information that the United States will then use this provocation as a pretext to strike government quarters in Damascus.
Everything we know so far about the chemical attacks in Syria: analysis from #Bellingcat
Editor's note. Cooperation between Assad and the Kremlin has again taken a characteristic criminal turn. Children and adults in Khan Sheikhoun are being poisoned with military gases, and Russian officials are exploring new levels of lies and tricks. Experts from Bellingcat have collected everything that is known about the recent chemical attack in Syria. And we have translated the bulk of the materials for you. Such texts are difficult to read: they are large, stylistically dry and overflowing with details. But this is what real military journalism and real open source intelligence look like.
Original publications— The Khan Sheikhoun Chemical Attack, The Evidence So Far AndWhat does chemistry tell us about the statements of the Russian Ministry of Defense about the attack on the “chemical weapons warehouse” in Khan Sheikhoun?
Bellingcat, Dan Kascheta
On Tuesday, April 4, 2017, photos and videos from Syrian sources captured what was later assessed as the use of chemical weapons in the city of Khan Sheikhoun, south of Idlib.
The first reports of the attack appeared in in social networks on the morning of Tuesday, April 4, 2017. It was stated that the airstrikes in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, used a chemical agent, which many sources described as sarin. The chronology of events outlined in these sources looked like this.
Translation - “On April 4, 2017, four missiles were fired at Khan al-Shekhun as a result of two airstrikes from a Su-22. Civil defense forces were present at the scene and their personnel were also injured. More than 200 wounded were taken to hospitals. We don’t yet know exactly how many victims there were, but preliminary estimates are 50 or 60 people. Medical teams stripped the wounded of their clothing, washed their bodies with water, and transferred them to medical centers. Symptoms are oppressive difficulty breathing, yellow foam from the mouth, and subsequently bloody vomiting.”
1:18 — “Many cases of suffocation are the result of gas attacks. Among the wounded are children and women. More than 70 victims. We don’t know what kind of gas he used.”
Photos and videos from the hospitals where victims of the attack were treated were published online and collected in this playlist along with other videos on the topic. In the video, victims, including children, show characteristic symptoms such as lack of reaction to light, foaming at the mouth and convulsions. This matches the symptoms of sarin poisoning, but is not the only one. ( Mlegsenerve-paralyticepoisonousesubstancesAbasicallycausesimilar symptoms - noteAnie PiM). However, given that sarin gas attacks had previously occurred in Syria and victims had similar symptoms, some observers have concluded that it was the same gas used in this case. In the following video (in English), Dr. Shajul Islam from Binnish Hospital talks about the situation that occurred in the institution while treating the victims.
Later, a message also came that one of the civil defense centers, used as a hospital, where victims of the previous attack were being rescued at that time, came under attack. This airstrike on a partially underground hospital was caught on camera.
Both Syria and Russia denied that chemical munitions were used in the airstrike. The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that the chemical contamination was caused by a shell hitting a rebel ammunition depot ( We have placed a separate Bellingcat material analyzing this lie at the bottom of the article - PiM note).
The first message appeared on the morning of April 4. This video, which, according to its author, recorded an airstrike with a chemical component, was uploaded online at 4:59 UTC (data from Amnesty International's YouTube Data Viewer).
Other photos showing the same location from other angles were published by news outlets such as Reuters.
Based on these videos and photos, it turned out to be possible to geolocate the funnel.
The geolocation of the crater, combined with the video of what appears to be a chemical weapons attack, shows that the crater is not visible in the video. In the video, it’s still not a chemical missile attack (assuming that this is the only place where a chemical attack occurred).
Another location of the lesion was shown in YouTube channel of the Syrian Journalism Center.
Translation: 2:20 - “Residential areas were attacked today. There are no military bases in the airstrike zone. The first rocket hit at 6:30, a little further from here, the second hit here.”
Although there were images of rocket remnants uploaded to the network, it is not yet possible to determine what kind of ammunition was used.
As a result of the attack, victims were taken to hospitals and clinics, some 50 kilometers from the site of the attack. IN videos published as a result of the attack, at least four different locations can be identified where patients were admitted and treated. These videos have been collected into separate playlists and tagged as hospital A , hospital B , hospital C And hospital D. The most interesting was Hospital B, located in Khan Sheikun itself and was hit by an airstrike on the same day as the chemical attack while treating its victims. The site was used both as a hospital and as a local civil defense center. The moment of the impact was captured on camera by local activists.
“According to the speaker of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Major General Igor Konashenkov, on Thursday, between 11:30 and 12:30 local time (from 8:30 to 9:30 UCT), a Syrian aircraft carried out an airstrike on the eastern outskirts of Khan- Sheikhun, hitting a large ammunition warehouse and military equipment terrorists. Konashenkov said that militants were transporting chemical munitions to Iraq through this warehouse. He also added that there were workshops there for the production of bombs filled with toxic substances. He noted that the same ammunition was used by militants in Syrian Aleppo.”
In addition to the purely geographical difficulties of transporting chemical weapons across all of Syria, including territories controlled by ISIS and the Assad government, it is worth noting that the time of the attack is stated here to be several hours later than the first appearance of the results of the airstrike on the Internet. It is also worth noting that the Russian Ministry of Defense has repeatedly been caught lying and falsifying evidence and should be considered extremely unreliable even when presenting evidence in favor of its position.
In response to accusations of a chemical attack in the Syrian Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that a warehouse of toxic substances had been destroyed in this city.
According to Russian means of objective airspace control, on April 4, between 11:30 and 12:30 local time, Syrian aircraft launched a strike in the area of the eastern outskirts of the village of Khan Sheikhun on a large terrorist ammunition depot and an accumulation of military equipment.
On the territory of this warehouse there were workshops for the production of landmines filled with toxic substances.
From this largest arsenal, ammunition and chemical weapons were delivered by militants to Iraqi territory. Their use by terrorists has been repeatedly proven as international organizations, and the official authorities of this country.
From a technical point of view, it appears unlikely that the chemical exposure observed on April 4 was the result of the “destruction of a chemical weapons depot,” as the Russian Ministry of Defense claims. So far, binary chemical agents have been used in the Syrian conflict. These agents are so called because they are prepared by mixing various components several days before use. For example, sarin is made by mixing isopropyl alcohol with methyl difluorophosphoranil, usually also using additives to neutralize the resulting acid. Another nerve agent, soman, is also produced through a binary process. VX is produced in a similar way, although the process involved is more complex than simply mixing materials.
There are several reasons for the Assad regime's use of binary chemical agents. Binary nerve agents are developed by the US Army to ensure safe storage and handling so that nerve agents do not move through the supply chain in finished form. Some American munitions ensure that such materials are mixed in the air after they are launched. Examples include the M687 155mm sarin artillery shell, the XM736 8-inch VX binary shell, and the Bigeye binary bomb. A lot of time was spent on research and development of these ammunition, and none of them showed in practice good results(This is especially true for VX). There is no evidence that the Assad regime has developed or adopted in-flight binary munitions. As a result of OPCW inspections and Syria's signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013, various fixed and mobile binary nerve agent mixing facilities were discovered.
Another reason for the use of binary sarin is that only a few countries have mastered the technology to produce “unitary” sarin, which has any long shelf life. During the main chemical reaction Upon production of sarin, for each synthesized molecule of sarin, one molecule of strong and dangerous hydrofluoric acid (HF) is released. The residue of this acid corrodes almost any container in which sarin is stored, and also quickly reduces the effectiveness of sarin. The USA and the USSR spent significant efforts to solve this problem. They found various ways separating hydrofluoric acid from sarin using expensive heavy chemical engineering techniques which, for obvious reasons, are best not described here. The Syrian authorities either failed to develop such techniques or decided that it was much cheaper, safer and easier to store the binary components, mixing them as needed. That is why the OPCW found mobile equipment for mixing components. In Iraq under Saddam Hussein, despite serious problems with the shelf life of sarin, it was also not purified from the acid.
Even if we assume that a significant amount of the substances used to synthesize sarin were in the same part of the same warehouse (which in itself would be quite strange), the airstrike could not have synthesized a large amount of sarin. An airstrike on the components of a binary nerve agent cannot serve as a mechanism for its synthesis. To assume such a thing is, to say the least, stupid. One of these substances is isopropyl alcohol. As a result of an airstrike, it would immediately burn, forming a huge fire ball, which was not observed at all.
Moreover, even if the Syrian military knew that the warehouse contained chemical weapons, an airstrike on such a warehouse would constitute an indirect use of such weapons.
Finally, let's return to the issue of industrial capacity. To produce sarin, at least 9 kilograms of substances are required, which are quite difficult to obtain. Approximately the same amount is required for the production of other nerve agents. Producing any significant quantities of nerve agents requires a complex supply chain of rare starting materials and an industrial base for their production. Are we asked to believe that the rebel group has spent huge amounts of money building up production facilities that have somehow gone unnoticed and unattacked until now? This possibility seems unlikely.
The Syrian army could have used sarin against civilians, but this information has not been definitively confirmed, two American officials shared their version with CNN. According to them, the assumption is based on large quantities victims and symptoms in victims.
The use of sarin in Khan Sheikhoun can only be confirmed by chemical analysis, since sarin has no color and no obvious odor, former member of the UN Commission on Biological and Chemical Weapons Igor Nikulin told RBC. “The carrier can be anything - these include chemical bombs industrial production, and homemade mines, cylinders with a fuse,” explains the expert.
If evidence is provided that these are industrially produced projectiles, with terminals and stamps, we can say that this is the work of the Syrian government army. Otherwise, Nikulin points out, we will be talking about handicraft production of the opposition.
Government traces
As a representative of the non-governmental Syrian Civil Defense (the organization better known as the White Helmets) told the opposition media center in Idlib, Khan Sheikhoun was attacked by government aircraft. Four rockets, including one with a warhead, were fired at residential areas in the north of the city early in the morning, around seven o'clock.
A source in American intelligence told Reuters about evidence of the involvement of the Syrian Armed Forces. He said the attack had “signs of action” by the Assad government. “If the Assad regime is indeed responsible for this attack, then, based on available data, this incident could be the largest such attack since the attack in August 2013 in the suburbs of Damascus,” an intelligence official told Reuters.
The administration of US President Donald Trump also blamed the chemical attack on the Assad regime, calling the actions of government troops “disgusting.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday that the United States is working to establish the circumstances of the incident, but the American administration sees this as a trace of the actions of the Syrian regime. He also noted that the attack was “a consequence of the weak and indecisive” policies of the Obama administration, which in 2012 promised to draw a red line against the use of chemical weapons, but never did anything.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said both rebel commanders and weapons experts agreed that the evidence so far indicated the attack was carried out by Syrian government forces, the BBC reported.
The city of Khan Sheikhoun is located in the southern part of Idlib province. It is controlled by the opposition, including the moderate group Ahrar al-Sham. The opposition conducts from the city offensive operations in the province of Hama. Thanks to the latest successes of opposition groups, the front line has moved away from the city by several tens of kilometers. The group's armed forces in the region, according to Financial Times estimates, amount to up to 25 thousand people. Previously, Ahrar al-Sham joined the truce declared in Syria in 2016, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley shows photos of Syrian chemical attack victims (Photo: Bebeto Matthews/AP)
Russia and Syria deny
The Syrian Army, in an official statement published by the SANA news agency, denied the involvement of government aircraft in the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun. The army has never used chemicals or toxic substances and “will not do so in the future,” the military said. The arguments and photographs presented by the opposition were called “false accusations” by government forces.
The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that Russian aircraft did not participate in the attack on the city. According to the official version of the military department, presented on Wednesday by Major General Igor Konashenkov, there was a large opposition ammunition depot in Khan Sheikhoun. According to the Ministry of Defense, on the territory of the military warehouse hit by Syrian aircraft, “there were workshops for the production of landmines filled with toxic substances.” These shells were later to be transported to Iraqi territory, the representative of the military department summarized. Konashenkov was unable to confirm the information about the ammunition depot using aerial photography data.
“Between 11:30 and 12:30 local time, Syrian aviation launched a strike in the area of the eastern outskirts of the village of Khan Sheikhun on a large terrorist ammunition depot and an accumulation of military equipment,” Interfax reports Konashenkov’s words.
The time indicated by the Russian Ministry of Defense contradicts the White Helmets and the testimony of eyewitnesses of the attack interviewed by The New York Times. They told the publication that the air raids began around seven in the morning. A few hours later, according to witnesses, Syrian aircraft struck one of the clinics where victims received treatment. health care. The wounded were admitted to small hospitals and private clinics after the area's main hospital was severely damaged in a bombing two days earlier, according to the newspaper.
The UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have found no evidence that the chemical weapons incident in the city of Khan Sheikhoun was the result of an air strike, UN High Representative for Disarmament Kim Won-soo said on Wednesday during his speech at meeting of the Security Council. “According to reports, the attack was carried out from the air and hit a residential area. However, to confirm the method of carrying out the alleged attack on at this stage“It’s impossible with certainty,” he said (quoted by TASS).
He also said that the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission, as well as the UN-OPCW Joint Mechanism to Investigate Chemical Attacks in Syria, had begun collecting information on the incident. Kim Won-soo assured that both organizations will ensure an “independent and impartial” investigation into what happened in Idlib province.
One of the leaders of the Syrian opposition, Hassan Haj Ali, commander of the Free Army of Idlib group, denied statements by the Russian Ministry of Defense that the strike was allegedly carried out by the Syrian Air Force on a large opposition ammunition depot, the Arabic agency The New Khalij reported. He said that the civilian population knows that the armed opposition does not have headquarters or any production facilities in the area. He also added that all opposition formations taken together are unable to produce such substances.
Resolution of Discord
On Tuesday, the United States, Great Britain and France submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council on the alleged attack in Syria, as reported by Reuters, citing diplomats. According to the agency, all three countries consider the Assad regime guilty of what happened.
According to the draft resolution, the Syrian government must provide the Security Council with flight plans and notes made on the day of the alleged attack, and the names of the crew commanders who carried out the flights. In addition, the initiators of the resolution demand that international inspectors be provided with access to the air base from which government aircraft took flights. The vote on the resolution could take place as early as Wednesday, April 5, agency sources indicate. Official representative Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said that the draft document is “anti-Syrian in nature.”
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on Assad's allies Russia and Iran to "influence the Syrian regime to ensure that this kind of horrific attack never happens again." “Russia and Iran also bear great moral responsibility for these deaths,” he added.
“International law prohibits the use, production and storage of any chemical weapons. Therefore, any use is considered an international crime,” notes Dmitry Labin, professor of the Department of International Law at MGIMO. He emphasizes that in order to name those responsible, the international community must first create an independent expert group that will conduct an investigation and establish the fact of the crime committed.
Chemical weapons in Syria
The production of toxic substances in Syria, according to non-governmental organizations and the CIA, began in the 1970s and 1980s with the participation of French organizations and specialists.
The largest chemical weapons attack occurred on August 21, 2013 in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. As a result of shelling with sarin nerve agent, according to various sources, from 280 to 1,700 people were killed. UN inspectors were able to establish that surface-to-surface missiles containing sarin were used at this location, and they were used by the Syrian military.
After the attack, then US President Barack Obama announced the possibility of sending troops into Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded with a plan to destroy chemical weapons in Syria. After this, the UN Security Council adopted resolution No. 2118 on the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons. On October 14, 2013, Syria acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention.
In October 2013, under the supervision of UN and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons experts, the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons began. The group of experts consisted of representatives of Russia, the USA, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Uzbekistan, China, Canada, the Netherlands and Tunisia. On June 23, 2014, the OPCW announced the removal last batch chemical weapons from Syrian territory.
However, after this in Syria, the UN and OPCW used chemical weapons by the Syrian military. Thus, Syrian troops used chemical weapons on March 16, 2015 in locality Kaminas, Idlib province. In another five cases, the organizer of the attack could not be identified.
Beirut, Lebanon. — On April 4, one of the worst chemical bombings in Syria's history turned the rebel-held northern region into a toxic zone, fueling international outrage over the government's growing impunity in the country's six years of war.
Western leaders, including President Trump, blamed the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and called on its backers, Russia and Iran, to prevent a repeat of what many have dubbed a "war crime."
Dozens of people, including children, died in agony, suffocation and foaming at the mouth from inhaling poison that may have contained a nerve agent or other banned chemicals, witnesses, doctors and rescue workers said. They say the substance spread early in the morning after several bombs were dropped by military aircraft. Some rescuers felt unwell and fell next to the dead man.
Representatives of the opposition-run Ministry of Health in Idlib province, where the attack took place, reported 69 dead and published a list of names. Not everyone has yet been identified, and some humanitarian groups said at least a hundred people were killed.
The government of Assad, who about four years ago abandoned the use of chemical weapons after a large-scale chemical attack, which, according to the conclusions of American intelligence services, was his own forces, denies the involvement of his army in the incident, as, in fact, every time when chemical weapons are used in Syria ammunition.
The Syrian military in a statement blamed the rebels and said it blamed the army for using toxic weapons "every time they fail to achieve the goals of their sponsors."
But only the Syrian military had the capability and motive to carry out an air attack like the one that struck rebels in the city of Khan Sheikhoun.
Russia has put forward a different explanation. Defense Ministry spokesman Major Igor Konashenkov said that Syrian warplanes struck a rebel storage facility containing toxic substances intended for use in chemical weapons.
According to witnesses to the attack, it all started before 7 am. Numerous photographs and videos posted online by activists and residents show children and elderly people suffocate and cannot breathe or lying motionless in the mud, as well as rescuers tearing off victims' clothes and dousing them with water from hoses. The bodies of at least ten children lay on the ground in a row or under blankets.
A few hours later, according to eyewitnesses, another airstrike hit a hospital with casualties who had recently been distributed to smaller clinics and maternity hospitals because an airstrike two days earlier had caused serious damage to the area's largest hospital.
The scale and brazenness of the attack threatened to further undermine the symbolic and frequently broken ceasefire imposed in parts of the country since Assad's troops recaptured the northern city of Aleppo with Russian help in December, boosting the Syrian leader's hopes of winning the war.
The attack was likely to slow down peace talks led by the United Nations in Geneva and Russia and Turkey in the Kazakh capital Astana.
Humanitarian groups skeptical of the chemical attack have demanded action from the UN Security Council, whose members have been paralyzed by division over who is responsible for the Syrian war almost since the conflict began in 2011.
The draft resolution, negotiated between diplomats from the three countries on April 4, was later sent to all 15 members of the UN Security Council. It could be submitted to a vote as early as Wednesday.
For Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly decried what he called President Barack Obama's failures in Syria, the chemical weapons attack created a potential political dilemma and exposed a number of glaring contradictions in his own evolving position on Syria.
The White House called the attack a “reprehensible” act against innocent people that the civilized world should not ignore.
At the same time, Trump's press secretary Sean Spicer condemned Obama for failing to fulfill his 2012 promise to establish a “red line,” which included military intervention in Syria if Assad used chemical weapons.
But in August 2013, Trump urged Obama not to intervene following a chemical weapons incident near Damascus that US intelligence attributed to the Syrian military and which, according to the US government, killed more than 1,400 civilians, including hundreds of children. “President Obama, don't attack Syria,” Trump tweeted at the time. “There is no benefit to this, just a huge disadvantage.”
The Trump administration, which would like to shift the focus in Syria solely towards the fight against the Islamic State (banned in the Russian Federation - editor's note), recently called Assad's retention in office a political reality, which drew strong condemnation from influential Republicans who believe that Assad needs to go.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had said that the fate of Bashar al-Assad “will be decided by the Syrian people,” sharply changed the tone of his statements on April 4, calling on Mr. al-Assad’s allies in the form of Russia and Iran “to use their influence on the Syrian regime and provide guarantees that that such horrific attacks will never happen again."
Russia has always insisted that it has no military role in the conflict. But a State Department official speaking at a briefing in Washington said Russian officials were only trying to evade responsibility because Russia and Iran were guarantors of the Assad government's intention to adhere to the ceasefire agreements at peace talks organized with the participation of the Kremlin in Astana.
Rescuers from a civil defense organization called the White Helmets note that many children were among the dead and wounded. Their own incident report reporter, Radi Saad, reported that the volunteers at the scene were unaware of the chemicals and five of them were injured from exposure to the substance.
While chlorine gas attacks have become common in northern Syria, this one was different, medical workers and witnesses to the tragedy said. Chlorine gas attacks usually kill only a few people, mostly in confined spaces, and the gas itself dissipates quickly.
This time it happened in the open air and claimed many more lives. Symptoms varied, including the victims' pupils shrinking to the size of dots, indicating the presence of nerve agents and other illicit poisons. One doctor even published a video showing how the pupil becomes smaller in this case. Several people felt unwell just by touching the victims.
The Minister of Health in the Syrian interim government, Mohammad Firas al-Jundi, said via video recordings that I visited field hospital at 7:30 am, when more than a hundred wounded and sick people were brought in.
“Patients are lying in the corridors and on the floor of operating rooms, in the intensive care unit and wards,” he said. “I saw more than 10 deaths caused by this attack.”
Symptoms, he said, included suffocation; fluid in the lungs, with foam at the mouth; loss of consciousness; convulsions; and paralysis.
"It's just terrifying," he said. “The world knows and understands everything that is happening in Syria, and we are ready to provide forensic laboratory workers with evidence of the use of these gases.”
A 14-year-old resident of the attacked town, Mariam Abu Khalil, said the attack happened as she went to take a Koranic exam, scheduled for early in the morning due to the low number of bombings expected. On the way, she saw a plane drop a bomb on a one-story building just a few tens of meters away from her. In a telephone interview on the evening of April 4, she described the explosion as a yellow mushroom that stung her eyes. “It was like winter fog,” the girl said.
Hiding in her house nearby, she saw several residents arrive to help the wounded. “When they got out of the car, they immediately inhaled the gas and died,” she said.
It was the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since August 2013. Under threat of US retaliation, Mr Assad agreed to a US-Russian agreement to eliminate his country's chemical weapons program, which he had until then denied existing, and join the international treaty banning chemical weapons.
But the operation took longer than expected and raised questions about whether all materials were accounted for. The head of the international watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, complained in an internal report about Damascus' misleading statements and raised concerns about the possible presence of undeclared chemical weapons.
The UN-run organization has since found that Syrian authorities used chlorine gas as a weapon three times in 2014 and 2015, violating the treaty. Rebels, doctors and anti-government activists say there are numerous other chlorine attacks, including at least two in the past week that left a doctor killed in the line of duty.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons also accused the Islamic State of using banned mustard gas in Iraq and Syria. The area around the city of Khan Sheikhoun is controlled not by the Islamic State, but by other insurgents: al-Qaeda-linked militants and a variety of other insurgent groups.
If the chemical weapons attack is the work of the government, then the issue of government impunity will certainly be raised at a major international meeting in Brussels, where officials will discuss the feasibility of the European Union and other countries allocating billions of dollars to rebuild Syria under Mr. Assad.
InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.
