De Mistura said an attack with chlorine gas in Syria would be “a war crime” but said he could not confirmation that it actually happened. “But if it did take place, it is a war crime”.
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“We have a special United Nations and other organisation addressing that”.
The gas is said to have been dropped by helicopters alongside barrel bombs in the rebel-held Zubdiya and Seif al Dawla neighborhoods of Aleppo.
In July, Syrian armed forces backed by Russian air power encircled eastern Aleppo, which has been held by armed groups since 2012.
There have been unconfirmed reports from activists and residents of chlorine gas falling on rebel-held east Aleppo since the rebel offensive began.
As the battle between government forces aided by Russian Federation and rebel forces for control of Aleppo intensifies, the city residents are caught in the middle, deprived of water, food and medicine in a city already devastated by years of fighting.
The challenge of verifying the use of chemical weapons in a war zone, particularly chlorine has hampered efforts to track their use.
“This attack in Aleppo is yet another flagrant violation of worldwide humanitarian law and signals a distressing pattern in the use of chemical weapons by regime forces”, said Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.
A man receiving treatment in hospital said he had been in the Zebdieh area of the city, where he lives, when two missiles landed near him and a group of friends.
Russian and Syrian warplanes have bombarded eastern Aleppo and other rebel-held areas of Syria daily for months and the USA suggested the humanitarian corridors plan may have been an attempt to depopulate the city so that the Syrian army could seize it.
Russian Federation confirmed that six Tupolev warplanes carried out airstrikes around Raqa, but said it had demolished “a chemical weapons factory in the city’s northwestern outskirts”. “We also call for the unrestricted free flow of aid to the tens of thousands of people trapped in the city’s east”, said Magdalena Mughrabi.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 24 civilians were killed in Russian airstrikes on Raqqa, the IS de facto capital in northern Syria, along with six others whose affiliation or identities could not yet be confirmed.
“We are looking into reports of chemical weapons being used against civilians in Aleppo”, Trudeau told reporters Thursday.
Fifteen of the only remaining doctors in the eastern half implored U.S. president Barack Obama Thursday to protect civilians from atrocities in their city.
People gather to buy fresh produce that was brought into rebel held areas of Aleppo by private traders from a newly opened corridor that linked besieged, opposition-held eastern Aleppo with western Syria that was captured recently by rebels.
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Moreover, attacks on civilian infrastructure had left more than two million people without electricity or access to the public water network for several days, it added.
