A neurologist, Dr. Ibrahim al-Assad, said he treated 16 of the 29 cases brought to his hospital on Monday night, most of whom were women and children.
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A video posted to YouTube apparently showed several men struggling to breathe in the aftermath.
“Medium-sized barrels fell containing toxic gasses”, a spokesman for the group said.
The Russian Tass news agency reported that a Kremlin spokesman said the claims of chemical gas being used in Saraqeb were false.
Rebel fire killed at least nine civilians, including three children, in the government-held portion of Aleppo, while presumed Russian or Syrian government airstrikes killed at least 11 in Atareb, a town to Aleppo’s west, activists and government media reported. The Syrian government led by Bashar Assad has been accused of using chemical weapons on both military and civilian targets.
Russian Federation has issued a statement denying any use of poison gas on their part, accusing the local media of fabricating the entire story.
Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry said the helicopter was shot down in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib by gunfire from the ground while returning to the Hmeimim Air Base after delivering humanitarian aid to the Syrian city of Aleppo.
The helicopter came down in Idlib province, roughly mid-way between Aleppo and the Russian air force base at Khmeimim, near the Mediterranean coast.
A Russian Mi-8 transport helicopter was shot down by gunfire in Syrian territory controlled by terrorists previously known as al-Nusra Front, Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday.
The group suspects that helicopters dropped chlorine and shards of metal on the neighborhood.
U.S. officials have suggested that a Russian and Syrian “humanitarian operation” for the besieged city of Aleppo is a ruse to evacuate civilians so that their forces can go after militants in the city who oppose Assad’s rule. The group did not claim that the bombs were chemical weapons.
Later that year the United Nations and the Syrian government agreed to destroy the state’s declared stockpile of chemical weapons, a process completed in January 2016.
Meanwhile, Russia launched heavy air strikes overnight on the outskirts of Aleppo, slowing a “last-chance” assault by rebels seeking to break a government siege.
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Despite persistent Western accusations that Moscow is abetting Assad in a brutal crackdown on his own people, Russian President Vladimir Putin has presented the Syrian operation as a success in the fight against Islamist terrorism. “And then, also, there was an attack … that happened just a month prior… close to Saraqeb”, Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Gaziantep along the Turkey-Syria border, said.
