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NY Times, April 8, 2020
Syria Used Chemical Weapons 3 Times in One Week, Watchdog Says
By Ben Hubbard
BEIRUT, Lebanon — An investigative team with the international group
that monitors compliance with the chemical weapons ban accused the
Syrian government on Wednesday of having launched three chemical weapons
attacks on one village in northern Syria in March 2017, sickening scores
of people.
The team, established by the Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons, said in a report that in the span of one week, Syrian
fighter jets had twice dropped bombs containing sarin nerve agent on the
village and a helicopter had targeted its hospital with a cylinder
containing chlorine.
Reports of chemical weapons use have surfaced frequently during Syria’s
nine-year civil war, and officials from the United States, Turkey and
other countries have accused the Syrian government of using banned
weapons to try to break the back of the rebel movement that is seeking
to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
The O.P.C.W. verified the use of chemical weapons in many of these
cases, but had refrained from assigning blame for who deployed them,
raising criticism from activists that holding back such judgments
diminished the chances for accountability.
So the organization established an investigative body, known as the
Investigation and Identification Team, that was assigned to determine
responsibility for chemical weapons use in Syria. The report on
Wednesday was the team’s first, and it pointed the finger at Mr.
al-Assad’s forces.
The team based its investigation on a range of evidence, including
witness testimonies, videos, forensic reports on recovered munitions
scraps, medical records and satellite imagery, the report said.
While acknowledging reports of dozens of chemical attacks in Syria, the
report focused on three, in the rebel-held village of Ltamenah in
northern Syria during the last week of March 2017.
On March 24, the team found, a Syrian fighter jet dropped a bomb
carrying sarin on the village, sickening 16 people. The next day, a
Syrian military helicopter dropped a cylinder containing chlorine on the
village’s hospital, which crashed through the roof, released its noxious
fumes and sickened 30 people. On March 30, a Syrian fighter jet dropped
another bomb on the village containing sarin, sickening at least 60 people.
Sarin is a banned nerve agent, and its use is considered a war crime.
While chlorine has legal uses in industry and cleaning, its use as a
chemical weapon also is considered a war crime.
The investigative team said it had examined alternative possibilities
for each attack, including claims by the governments of Syria and
Russia, a close Syrian ally, that the attacks had been staged by
anti-government activists to demonize Mr. al-Assad’s government. But the
team called its conclusions “the only ones that could be reasonably
reached from the information obtained.”
Such attacks, the team’s report said, could only be carried out based on
orders from “the highest levels” of the Syrian military. But names of
those believed responsible were redacted from the public version of the
report.
Despite the mounting evidence of repeated chemical weapons use by Mr.
al-Assad’s forces, little has been done by the international community
to hold them or their leaders accountable. But Wednesday’s report
provided some consolation to survivors of the attacks it described.
“Until today, my bones, my eyes are hurting,” said Ahmad al-Rahmoun, who
passed out after breathing in gas from the attack on March 30. But he
wondered why it had taken so long for an international body to assign blame.
“Why did they wait until today to accuse Bashar?” he said of Mr.
al-Assad, calling for him to be prosecuted as well as “all the pilots
behind such attacks.”
The Syrian government has denied throughout the war that its forces have
used chemical weapons while accusing rebels and anti-government
activists of faking attacks to generate international sympathy. Russia
and Iran, another strong ally of Mr. al-Assad, have backed his denials.
The O.P.C.W. team said in its report it had received no cooperation from
the Syrian government in its investigation, nor was it able to visit the
attack sites.
The Syrian government did not immediately comment on the findings. The
United States, a strong supporter of the team’s investigation, welcomed
the report as a demonstration of what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
called O.P.C.W.’s “unbiased and professional” work.
“No amount of disinformation from Assad’s enablers in Russia and Iran
can hide the fact that the Assad regime is responsible for numerous
chemical weapons attacks,” Mr. Pompeo said in a statement.
The attacks in Ltamenah received little attention at the time because
they did not kill anyone, but they came just days before a Syrian
government chemical attack on another town nearby, Khan Sheikhoun,
killed more than 80 people on April 4, 2017.
President Trump responded to that attack by ordering the launch of 59
Tomahawk cruise missiles at military sites in Syria to punish Mr.
al-Assad for using chemical weapons.
The White House later declassified a report that accused Syria of not
only carrying out the attack, but also working with the Russian
government on a disinformation campaign to deflect blame.
After the deadliest chemical attack in Syria’s war, on an area near
Damascus known as Ghouta in August 2013, Russia facilitated an
international agreement for Syria to give up its chemical weapons
stockpiles and dismantle its capabilities.
While members of the Obama administration lauded the agreement for
getting rid of Syria’s chemical weapons peacefully, reports of chemical
attacks by Mr. al-Assad’s forces continued to surface.
The three chemical attacks attributed to the Syrian government in
Wednesday’s report came after Syria was supposed to have relinquished
all of its chemical weapons.
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
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