Chlorine was used against the rebel-held Syrian town of Douma last year, the world’s chemical weapons watchdog said on Friday in a long-awaited final report on the deadly attack.
The report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was based on a visit by inspectors to the site of the attack, which witnesses said killed 43 people.
Western powers led by the US blamed the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the incident and unleashed air strikes on military installations in response.
Photo: AP
The watchdog said two cylinders likely containing chlorine smashed into a housing block in the town.
The report said that there were “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine.”
However, the report said that it found no evidence of the use of nerve agents in Douma, which had previously been alleged by some parties in the conflict.
The findings confirmed an interim report released by the watchdog in July last year saying that traces of chlorine were found.
The report does not place blame, because it was not in the watchdog’s remit at the time, although the organization has since been given powers to investigate responsibility for all chemical attacks in Syria back to 2014.
Russia, which backs al-Assad, rejected the report, saying that the attack was “staged” by Syrian rescue volunteers known as the White Helmets.
“In spite of all the evidence presented by Russia, Syria and even British journalists that the Douma incident is no more than ‘White helmets’ staged provocation, Technical Secretariat of OPCW states in today’s report that chlorine was used in Douma as a chemical weapon,” the Russian embassy in The Hague tweeted.
British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jeremy Hunt said Syria should honor a 2013 vow to destroy all its chemical weapons, made after 1,400 people were killed in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in what the UN said was an attack using the nerve agent sarin.
A team of OPCW inspectors took more than 100 samples from seven sites in Douma when they gained access to the town after being denied access for several weeks.
The OPCW said it reached its conclusions based on “witnesses’ testimonies, environmental and biomedical samples analysis results, toxicological and ballistic analyses from experts.”
The report said “two yellow industrial cylinders dedicated for pressurised gas” were found, one of which landed on top of the housing block and crashed through it.
It said it was “possible that the cylinders were the source of the substances containing reactive chlorine.”
The OPCW said witnesses told the team there were “43 decedents related to the alleged chemical incident, most of whom were seen in videos and photos strewn on the floor of multiple levels of an apartment building and in front of the same building.”
The videos “indicate exposure to an inhalational irritant or toxic substance” and show burns to the eyes and foaming from the mouth, although it could not directly link those to any specific substance.
The watchdog rejected claims by the Syrian regime that the gas came from an alleged rebel chemical weapons facility in the area.
“From the analysis of the information gathered during the on-site visits to the warehouse and facility suspected of producing chemical weapons, there was no indication of either facility being involved in their manufacture,” it said.
The report is to go to the UN Security Council.
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