News reports of the most recent alleged use of chlorine bombs by the Syrian government comes nearly two weeks after the United Nations-backed Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) determined that Assad still has the capability to launch chemical weapon attacks, noting that its inspectors discovered the presence of previously undeclared chemical weapon agents. Rescuers and citizen journalists who went to the scene said by text message that there had been a strong smell of bleach.
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Earlier last month, Russian Federation said Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki militant group, considered by Washington as “moderate opposition”, launched poisonous materials from Sukkari toward the eastern part of Aleppo, leaving seven people dead and over 20 others injured.
A military source told SANA that over the past few hours, army units, in cooperation with the supporting forces, carried out intensive operations against positions of the terrorist organizations in al-Ramousa area to the south of Aleppo city.
“About 40 of them were kids and there were about 15 women, the symptoms were very clearly chlorine attack”, Mohamad Katoub, a doctor with the Syrian American Medical Society, tells Alice.
Although February’s ceasefire agreement created an all-too-brief respite in fighting, there has been a tragic increase in violence targeting Syrian civilians, crushing hopes of peace in the war-torn country, a group of United Nations experts warned.
Johnson on Wednesday used a newspaper column to back the High Negotiations Committee’s plan that calls for the departure within six months of Syrian President Bashar Assad, followed by a shift to constitutional rule and free elections. CNN notes that chlorine was not part of that deal because it has other, legitimate uses as an industrial chemical. “The fact the global community did nothing has encouraged him and encouraged Islamic State to do the same”. It reported no deaths. Multiple children appear in the video, breathing through oxygen masks.
Many of those fleeing feared a violent government response to the rebel advance, according to Ahmad al-Ahmad, an activist from Hama. Attacks by both sides have killed and maimed scores of civilians, many of them children.
“The secretary remains committed to continuing efforts to try and resolve the outstanding issues in order to reach an arrangement on Syria. but we won’t agree to an arrangement that does not meet our core objectives”, Toner said.
But Russia has blocked the use of those sanctions against the Syrian government, which denies it was responsible.
The report notes that as hostilities resumed in areas that had enjoyed relative peace for the first time in five years, so did aerial and shelling bombardments, primarily by pro-government forces.
There has been another reported chemical weapon attack in Syria. Under threat of USA retaliation for the sarin attacks, the government agreed to eliminate its previously secret chemical weapons program.
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“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.
