The group, a network of volunteer search and rescue workers also known as the White Helmets that operates exclusively in rebel-held areas, posted a video on YouTube purportedly showing a number of men struggling to breathe and being given oxygen masks by rescue workers. Rebels and activists have reported chlorine gas attacks in the town before, but the lack of chemical labs or independent testers makes it hard to verify these claims.
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Abdel Aziz Bareeh, a doctor working in Saraqeb, told the BBC that the helicopter dropped two barrels of chlorine gas on the town. But spokesman Farhan Haq said the world body would push for Syrian “negotiations than can accomplish something” by the end of the month.
Rudskoi called the downing a terrorist act against Russian forces, which were deployed in Syria with the aim to help Syrian government fight terrorists.
Meanwhile, Russia launched heavy air strikes overnight on the outskirts of Aleppo, slowing a “last-chance” assault by rebels seeking to break a government siege.
In the latest incident, a Russian military helicopter was shot down in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province, killing all five people on board.
The helicopter came down roughly midway between Aleppo and Russia’s main air base at Khmeimim in the western province of Latakia, near the Mediterranean coast.
The news agency Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing representatives of Syrian opposition forces that on the night after a Russian Mil Mi-8 helicopter was shot down, some helicopter allegedly dropped containers with toxic gas on a township near the place of the disaster.
So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Videos uploaded online by Syrian opposition activists showed the burning wreckage of a Russian helicopter in footage seemingly taken in the first moments after it crashed.
33 people, mostly women, and children were allegedly poisoned with what is suspected to be chlorine gas in Saraqeb, a town in the rebel-held Idlib province.
On Monday, the rebels in Idlib countryside downed a Russian helicopter, with reports saying that all five crew members were killed.
It said nine people-among them three children-were killed on Monday and 11 people died in the attacks on Sunday.
Russian Federation has issued a statement denying any use of poison gas on their part, accusing the local media of fabricating the entire story. At least one person was killed in al-Sukkari neighborhood, according to the activist-operated Local Coordination Committees. The weapon used was identified as sarin gas.
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The Western leaders widely see Russia’s air campaign in the country as an effort to prop up the administration of the current Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad. The government accused the rebels, who, in turn, denied the accusation.
