Global chemical arms inspectors are to take the unprecedented step of exhuming some bodies of victims in the Syrian town of Douma as they work to verify last month’s alleged chemical attack, a media report said on Thursday.
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) director-general Ahmet Uzumcu told the Financial Times that the organization’s fact-finding mission had already gathered more than 100 “environmental samples” since getting access to the site northeast of Damascus on April 21.
The OPCW’s mission to Douma was launched after footage from an apparent April 7 onslaught horrified the world and prompted unparallelled strikes on Syrian military installations, but inspectors, in a bid to find further evidence of alleged chlorine and sarin use in the attack, in which medics and rescuers say more than 40 people were killed, are now looking at “ways to exhume and take some biomedical samples,” Uzumcu said.
“It is a very sensitive process. That’s why they are very cautious. Although our experts have been able to attend some autopsies in the past, this is going to be the first time we have exhumed bodies,” he told the newspaper.
The Hague, Netherlands-based OPCW confirmed that inspectors are indeed looking to conduct autopsies on the bodies, adding that the fact-finding mission “is continuing to explore all avenues for collecting evidence.”
Uzumcu told the Financial Times that it could be a month before the mission publishes its report on Douma, but another OPCW official said that it “is premature to speculate as to when the report will be ready for sharing” with the watchdog’s member states.
The OPCW mission gained access to Douma on April 21 after several delays, but experts have said chemical traces — if they existed — could still be found, including in the bodies of the alleged victims.
Damascus and Moscow have accused Syrian volunteer rescue workers known as the White Helmets of staging the video footage at the behest of the US and its allies.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
RSS