Syrian air force may have dropped chlorine bomb on town in rebel area in
2018 - chemical arms watchdog
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[April 12, 2021]
By Anthony Deutsch
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The global chemical
weapons watchdog has "reasonable grounds to believe" that Syria's air
force dropped a chlorine bomb on a residential neighbourhood in the
rebel-controlled Idlib region in February 2018, a report released on
Monday said.
There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government. Syria and its
military ally Russia have consistently denied using chemical weapons
during President Bashar al-Assad's decade-old conflict with rebel
forces, saying any such attacks were staged by opponents to make
Damascus look like the culprit.
The new report by the OPCW chemical weapons watchdog's investigative arm
said no one was killed when the cylinder of chlorine gas, delivered in a
barrel bomb, hit the Al Talil neighbourhood in the city of Saraqib in
February 2018.
However, a dozen people were treated for symptoms consistent with
chemical poisoning, including nausea, eye irritation, shortness of
breath, coughing and wheezing, it said.

Chlorine is not an internationally banned toxin, but the use of any
chemical substance in armed conflict is banned under the 1997 Chemical
Weapons Convention, the implementation of which is overseen by the OPCW
watchdog based in The Hague.
A crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators by Assad in 2011 mushroomed
into civil war, with Russia and Iran supporting his government and the
United States, Turkey and some Arab adversaries of Damascus backing some
of the many rebel groups.
In April 2020, the OPCW's Investigation and Identification Team (IIT)
concluded that Syrian warplanes and a helicopter had dropped bombs
containing chlorine and sarin nerve gas on a village in Syria's Hama
region in March 2017.
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The headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) is pictured in The Hague, Netherlands, October 4,
2018. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw/File Photo

The latest report by the IIT also implicated Syrian government
forces. It concluded that "there were reasonable grounds to believe
that at least one cylinder filled with chlorine was dropped from a
helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Forces, belonging to the Tiger
Forces."
The Tiger Forces are an elite Syrian military unit generally used in
offensive operations in the war, which has largely subsided with
Assad having wrested back most territory with crucial Russian and
Iranian support.
"All elements indicated the presence of Tiger Forces in the vicinity
of Saraqib. They found that a helicopter was just flying above the
bombed area at the moment of the gas release," a summary of the OPCW
report said.
It said that samples collected from the scene were examined and
other possible means of chlorine contamination considered, but the
OPCW team said nothing was found to indicate that the incident was
staged by Assad's adversaries.
The team identified individuals believed to be involved in the
alleged attack but did not release them.
Between 2015 and 2017, a joint United Nations-OPCW team known as the
Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) found that Syrian government
troops had used the nerve agent sarin and chlorine barrel bombs on
several occasions, while Islamic State militants were found to have
used mustard gas.
(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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