At least 10 civilians have been killed, the Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue workers’ organization that operates in rebel-held areas, said.
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“Terrorist groups and their Western and Persian Gulf patrons regularly disseminate anti-Syria propaganda through fabricating baseless allegations about the use of chemical agents, like chlorine gas”.
If OSDH was not able to say what gas is concerned, activists from Aleppo Media Center, a antirégime association, accused Twitter of government forces have used chlorine.
The head of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog will probe a suspected chlorine gas attack in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Video footage showed gasping children receiving treatment in a field hospital with oxygen masks clamped on their faces.
Medical workers in the city say the opposition-controlled neighborhood was struck with chlorine gas Tuesday, though the report could not be independently verified.
A Syrian foreign ministry statement said Damascus was ready to cooperate with a team of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) now in Syria and looking into incidents Damascus blames on “terror groups and their foreign operatives”. They have the option of handing over their weapons under a government amnesty or being evacuated to the rebel-held northwestern city of Idlib.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was stripped of the majority of his chemical arsenal in 2013 after the USA threatened an attack due to their alleged use in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, leading to a multinational deal under which the weapons were removed. They treated at least 70 people for breathing difficulties.
The 146 men, women and children left Moadamiyeh as part of an earlier deal reached to completely evacuate Daraya, which was besieged by the government for four years.
Since the Ghouta attack, he estimated that chemical weapons had been used more than 100 times in the conflict, and their effectiveness when deployed by the regime against ISIS had encouraged the terror group to use them in turn. At the time, Assad fended off a threatened USA bombing campaign only by agreeing to give up his arsenal of chemical weapons, later destroyed by the OPCW.
Ankara is hoping a ceasefire will be implemented in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo for the Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha) Islamic holiday which in Turkey begins around September 12.
Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has been conducting airstrikes to bolster his forces for almost a year.
“Continued U.S. inaction to protect the civilians of Syria means that our plight is being wilfully tolerated by those in the worldwide corridors of power”.
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Wednesday’s developments came as Russian Federation announced that its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Geneva on Thursday and Friday to discuss Syria. As we have seen in and around Aleppo the last several days it is clear the fighting will not stop while both the regime and the opposition fight to encircle one another.
