Amnesty International reported the use of chemical weapons by government forces on at least three occasions during a two week period in August.
Advertisement
A report by The Guardian also noted that a medical report obtained from one of the hospitals in the besieged eastern part of Aleppo was shared with journalists.
On its Facebook page, the Civil Defence said that 80 people had suffocated, although did not mention any deaths, according to Reuters.
Videos posted online by activist groups showed children and adults with breathing difficulties receiving treatment in local clinics.
At least 37 children and ten women were among those hospitalized, the Aleppo Free Doctors Committee said. It is a crowded neighbourhood’.
In Wednesday’s airstrike, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one child was among the victims of what was a presumed to have been a Russian or Syrian government attack on the al-Sukkari neighborhood in Aleppo.
The Syrian government, however, has supposedly used chlorine gas in attacks before. The Syrians deliberately constructed a weapon that could deliver the gas and then dropped it on a civilian neighborhood.
Fatal in high concentrations, the gas can cause lung damage and severe breathing difficulties in lower doses. The Syrian government denied having carried out the attack.
“We are disturbed by the recent allegations of the use of toxic chemicals in Aleppo”, said a statement by the director-general of the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ahmet Uzumcu.
Syria was forced to destroy its chemical weapons stockpiles after signing onto the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013.
Since the Ghouta attack, he estimated that chemical weapons had been used more than 100 times in the conflict, and their effectiveness when deployed by the regime against ISIS had encouraged the terror group to use them in turn.
But the government has denied the accusations.
Fighting in the deeply contested city of Aleppo has not let up despite global efforts to establish a cease-fire. “In government-held areas, indiscriminate ground shelling (by) armed groups … is also killing scores of civilians”, he added.
A Turkish official says some Syrian refugees are seeking to return home after Turkey-backed Syrian rebels pushed Islamic State militants out of the Syrians’ hometown last week.
Kalin told private broadcaster NTV Tuesday that the initial plan was for a 48-hour ceasefire. Turkey’s actions “could further complicate the military and political situation in Syria, which is dire as it is” and jeopardize global efforts to reach a peace deal, it added. It expanded its operation into nearby al-Rai over the weekend. The organization said government helicopters had dropped barrel bombs containing chlorine on the Sukari neighborhood in eastern Aleppo.
Advertisement
Neither did the United Nations comment on who might have committed the latest Aleppo attack, saying only that the neighbourhood had sustained intense shelling on Tuesday. Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman was unable to confirm the claim but said that no one was killed in the strikes.
