A suspected chlorine gas attack on an opposition-held neighbourhood in the Syrian city of Aleppo has caused dozens of cases of suffocation, rescue workers and a monitoring group said.
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The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the attack, saying that medical sources accused regime warplanes of pounding the Sukkari neighborhood with barrel bombs “laden with poison gas”.
It said the al-Quds Hospital treated 71 other victims, including 37 children and 10 women. The report said 10 of the patients are in critical care, including a pregnant woman.
The so-called Syrian Civil Defense, which operates in militant-controlled areas, also claimed that Syrian helicopters dropped barrel bombs containing chlorine. A UN-led investigation in August found the government had used chlorine on at least two occasions.
Each side of the civil war in Syria has accused the other side of using poisonous gasses, according to the Voice of America.
“Chlorine is a common industrial chemical, but its use in weapons is banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention”, points out BBC.
“We are disturbed by the recent allegations of the use of toxic chemicals in Aleppo”, said a statement by the director-general of the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ahmet Uzumcu.
Sept, 08, 2016:Fighting between Syrian government army and insurgents in Syria’s central Hama province forced about 100,000 people to leave their homes between August 28 and September 5, the United Nations humanitarian agency said Wednesday.
The organization says the rescuers were trying to help victims from earlier strikes on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib and the Salehine neighborhood in the city of Aleppo.
Russia, a close Syrian government ally, has blocked sanctions against President Bashar Assad’s government.
The city has always been divided between government-held areas in the west and opposition-controlled neighborhoods in the east.
A suspected chlorine attack reportedly hit the Sukkari area of East Aleppo on Tuesday morning.
Erdogan told journalists aboard a plane as he returned from a G-20 meeting that the issue was brought up by U.S. President Barack Obama during the meetings in China.
The five-year civil war, sparked by a Syrian government crackdown on non-violent demonstrators, has pitted part of the country’s Sunni majority against Assad’s ruling Allawite Muslim minority.
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“There are more actors today in Syria with the availability of the substances and the ability to mix them and use them, if they so choose, as chemical weapons; and this is something very worrying”, said Virginia Gamba, head of the three-member UN Joint Investigative Mechanism that confirmed chemical weapons use in Syria.
