Opposition activist group the Aleppo Media Center and the impartial Syrian Civil Defense rescue organization also accused the Syrian regime of causing breathing problems in the neighborhood after the attack, but went a step further, charging that the district was targeted with chlorine gas.
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The Syria Civil Defence, an organisation that operates in rebel-held areas and is also known as the “White Helmets”, posted video on its Facebook page showing distressed children using oxygen masks to breathe.
The U.K. -based monitoring group Syria Observatory for Human Rights said it had also spoken to local doctors who accused government forces of dropping barrel bombs “loaded with poison gas” over the eastern, rebel-held district.
Russian and Iran-backed Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad is using warplanes to drop suspected chlorine-laden bombs on a nearby suburb, wounding at least 80 people, majority women and children. The worlds chemical weapons watchdog found Assads regime responsible for two chemical attacks – one each in 2014 and 2015 – in the northwestern Idlib province.
The group will use all available means to investigate the allegations of toxic gas use in the attack and submit the findings to members states of the Chemical Weapons Convention, said.
It said Russian Federation and the Syrian Government have carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.
A suspected chlorine attack by Syrian government forces was blamed Wednesday for one death and respiratory injuries suffered by scores of civilians near rebel-held Aleppo. Such symptoms are consistent with attacks involving chlorine, which can kill in high concentrations.
Volunteer emergency workers said the bombs were dropped on Sukkari on Tuesday and most people injured were civilians.
“Activists on the ground are saying that victims that were rushed to the hospitals are experiencing breathing difficulties”, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from the Turkish city of Gaziantep near the Syria-Turkey border, said. The document stated that at least 71 people – including 37 children and 10 women – were treated for breathing difficulties, dry cough, and that the clothes they arrived in smelled of chlorine.
The Syrian government has always denied accusations of using chemical weapons.
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Russia, a close Syrian government ally, has blocked sanctions against President Bashar Assad’s government. The city has always been divided between government and opposition areas of control. The city has been heavily hit by intensifying violence in recent months following the failure of a American- and Russian-brokered “cessation of hostilities” earlier this year.
