The Syrian government dropped barrel bombs containing what appears to be chlorine on a residential neighborhood in Aleppo Tuesday.
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Footage of the apparent chlorine gas attack on the Sukari district, near Aleppo’s main battlefield in the city’s southwest, showed crying children being doused with water and then lying on hospital beds and breathing through respirators.
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”.
According to Ibrahem Alhaj, a member of the Syria Civil Defense first responders’ team, in an interview with the Associated Press (AP), said the mojority of people injured were women and children. “The use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances is unacceptable”, he added in a statement.
This represents the third instance in which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has dropped chlorine gas bombs on his own people.
Syrian state media and an activist group are reporting that government forces and their allies have captured new ground on the edge of the contested northern city of Aleppo.
He said the Syrian conflict has seen a resurgence in chemical weapons, which had not been widely used since the Iran-Iraq War and Saddam Hussein’s campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s. The UN investigation specified one example of when ISIS militants “had used mustard gas”, and two cases “where regime forces had used chlorine as a chemical weapon”.
The worldwide community took no military action in response, although a multinational deal was struck under which the majority of Syria’s chemical arsenal was removed.
The Syrian government denied dropping chlorine in Aleppo on Tuesday, according the al Jazeera television network. It says 88 prisoners were released, though 36 of them may be conscripted into the military.
President Bashar al-Assad would be required to leave office at the end of those six months, the HNC, which represents Syria’s political and armed opposition factions, said at the meeting in London attended by foreign ministers from around the world. The U.S.is working continuously to address the crisis in Syria working through the United Nations and engaging with Russian Federation and others to find a diplomatic approach to reduce the violence in a sustainable way and allow unimpeded lifesaving humanitarian assistance into areas like Aleppo.
The military effort to retake fallen areas in southern Aleppo came as the world powers, such as Russian Federation and the United States, were working to establish a broad ceasefire in Syria, despite no breakthrough yet.
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The city has always been divided between government and opposition areas of control.
