This chemical attack poisoned 37 children; one girl, Hajer Kyali, 13, died on Wednesday. Officials said her house was directly hit by one of the barrel bombs.
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Medical staff members described seeing people with symptoms such as shortness of breath, coughing, sneezing, irritation of the eyes, nausea and in some cases respiratory failure.
Assad’s use of chlorine as a weapon violates the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2235, which calls for global action in the case of continued chemical weapons use by the Syrian dictator.
In London on Wednesday, Syrian opposition leaders unveiled a plan for a political transition created to bring an end to the war. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 civilians were killed, including a child.
The Observatory says the government is likely trying to secure the release of the bodies of at least two Russian airmen who were killed when their helicopter crashed in Syria’s rebel-controlled Idlib province a month ago.
The committee’s leader, Riyad Hijab, a former Syrian prime minister who defected after a crackdown on protests that began in 2011, laid out the plan in London at a meeting of countries supporting the opposition.
But a yearlong investigation by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, released last month, concluded that “at least two chemical attacks have been committed by the Syrian regime”, Alice reports.
Moscow’s intervention allowed the government to win back some ground, notably imposing a siege on eastern Aleppo where some 250,000 to 300,000 residents are now thought to be trapped. CNN notes that chlorine was not part of that deal because it has other, legitimate uses as an industrial chemical. “The use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances is unacceptable”, he added in a statement.
In a sign of the deepening conflict in Aleppo, Capt. Abdel-Razzak Abdel-Salam, a spokesman for the rebel group Nour el-Din el-Zinki, said rebel fighters resumed shelling the Castello road, the government-captured highway that was considered in worldwide talks as a potential corridor for humanitarian aid. “The fact the global community did nothing has encouraged him and encouraged Islamic State to do the same”. There have been two reported deaths, and though most of the victims were discharged after a few hours, at least ten remain in intensive care.
Children are among the victims seen in videos in the aftermath of the alleged chlorine bombing of the Aleppo neighborhood in the videos and in photos, they are shown needing to use oxygen masks in order to breathe.
Many people had already left the area, terrified of another attack.
Activists and rescuers said at least 70 people were treated for breathing difficulties after government helicopters dropped the suspected chlorine cylinders on al-Sukkari neighborhood.
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Once they had been searched and their identity cards were checked, the evacuees boarded government buses that took them to Harjalleh, another government-held area, near Damascus.
