In a statement released Tuesday, the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders said it treated four patients, all members of one family from Marea, who showed signs of exposure to chemical agents.
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Activists and medical organisations have documented an alleged chemical weapons attack on a Syrian town last week that affected dozens of civilians, with one source blaming the Islamic State group.
The patients came from the town of Marea, which reportedly had been the site of attacks via mortars and other artillery.
In addition, the Syrian American Medical Society has reported receiving 50 patients with symptoms consistent with chemical exposure. They arrived at MSF’s hospital an hour after the attack, suffering from breathing difficulties, inflamed skin, red eyes and conjunctivitis.
Pablo Marco, MSF’s programme manager in Syria said that it was not possible with lab work to at this stage confirm the cause of the symptoms, but that “the patients’ clinical symptoms, the way these symptoms changed over time, and the patients’ testimony about the circumstances of the poisoning all point to exposure to a chemical agent”.
“Roughly 23 civilians developed skin blisters, with doctors identifying the agent to be mustard gas”, SAMS said.
Islamic State waged a three-day assault from August 9-12, and had begun another two days ago, the Observatory said, using vehicle bombs in a bid to overrun the base where government forces have always been besieged by the jihadists.
IS, which has seized territory across Syria and Iraq, is fighting Kurdish forces and Arab groups opposed to it in both countries.
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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed with the United States and Russian Federation to dispose of the government’s chemical weapons – an arsenal which Damascus had never formally acknowledged – after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack on the outskirts of the capital in August 2013. Reports of a sulphur mustard attack on Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Iraq are also being investigated. The family’s home was struck Friday with a shell that emitted a yellow gas that filled the living room, the group said.
