A chlorine gas attack allegedly carried out by the Syrian government in the contested city of Aleppo killed at least two people – one a teenage girl – and injured more than 100, medical personnel said Wednesday.
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In 2013, after sarin gas attacks killed more than 1,000 people in rebel-held suburbs of Damascus, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution authorizing militarily enforceable sanctions for any party using chemical weapons in Syria.
Both sides in Syria’s complex war have traded accusations of attacks against civilians and use of unconventional weapons including chlorine and mustard gas.
In late August, the United Nations investigators had concluded that Syrian military helicopters had poured chlorine gas in at least two locations in the province of Idleb in the northwest of Syria, Talmenes April 21, 2014 and Sarmin March 16, 2015. At least 20 people died in that attack, The New York Times reported.
Ibrahim al-Hajj, a spokesman for the volunteer Syrian emergency group White Helmets, said that four rescue workers from his organization, which works in opposition-held areas of the country, were killed in air raids over the past 24 hours in and near Aleppo. He said he himself had difficulty breathing and used a mask soaked in salt water to prevent irritation. The Civil Defense said on its Facebook page that 80 people had suffocated. A video by the rescuers shows children crying and men coughing.
Editor’s note: This story contains graphic images, including some of child victims. “It is a crowded neighbourhood”.
Hamza al-Khatib, who heads an Aleppo medical center, said Afifa had been in intensive care following the suspected chlorine attack.
Chlorine gas is a crude weapon that can be fatal in high concentrations.
There was no independent confirmation of who carried out the attack or that chlorine was used; the Assad government and its armed opponents have accused each other of using chlorine as a weapon of war.
The resolution followed Syria’s approval of a Russian proposal to relinquish its chemical weapons stockpile and join the Chemical Weapons Convention. In it, SAMS documented a total of 161 chemical attacks from when the conflict began through 2015.
But Syria’s ally Russian Federation said it had “very serious questions” about the report while the Syrian envoy to the world body, Bashar Jaafari, rejected the findings.
Meanwhile, the plight of some 250,000 civilians trapped in rebel-held districts of Aleppo has spurred worldwide efforts to agree a new humanitarian truce.
The suspected chemical attack came as Syrian government loyalists battled to consolidate their hold over what had been the last rebel supply line into the opposition-held east of the city, after the capture of the route on Sunday.
A Turkish official says some Syrian refugees are seeking to return home after Turkey-backed Syrian rebels pushed Islamic State militants out of the Syrians’ hometown last week.
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At a Wednesday press briefing, U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark C. Tone said Secretary of State John Kerry had spoken by phone with his Russian counterpart earlier in the day, but had no travel plans to announce related to Syria talks.
