Four patients exhibiting symptoms of exposure to chemical agents were treated at a hospital run by global medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in northern Syria’s Aleppo governorate on August 21.
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MSF said the patients, who were all from one family, were treated one hour after the attack.
A number of Mare’a residents said they suffered from asphyxiation after the ISIL terrorists fired shells seemingly containing toxic materials at the town on Saturday, Syria’s official SANA news agency reported.
Chemical weapons may have been used by Islamic militants after people from Marea reported suffering from breathing difficulties and developed blisters after a mortar hit the town. Hours later, he said, victims began coming in with labored breathing, red skin patches, diarrhea and red, watery eyes-all symptoms of chemical warfare.
The emerging reports of a chemical weapons attack, thought to have been conducted by ISIS, come on the day that images of an ancient temple destroyed by ISIS were widely distributed, destruction that was labelled as a “war crime” by UNESCO.
At least nine Syrian officers were killed during clashes with the Islamic State (IS) terror group, a media report said. The humanitarian group, which operates a field clinic in the area, said 30 of those people developed severe blisters that doctors linked to mustard gas. The protests took place in areas in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartous, it said. The patients said that a piece of mortar entered their home on August 21 and yellow gas filled the room after it exploded.
“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”, Marco told Reuters.
Syria’s government had stockpiles of more than 19 tonnes of mustard gas, but it handed them over as part of a multinational effort to strip the country of 1,300 metric tonnes of chemical weapons.
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Noteworthy, the U.S. Central Command said earlier this month that ISIS was suspected of having used chemical agents in an attack on Kurdish forces in northern Syria.
