In the gas sector: what is known about the chemical attack in Syria. How Syria was accused of using chemical weapons. Dossier Use of chemical weapons in Syria
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The press got a photo of a crater in Khan Sheikhoun, which shows parts of the ammunition
The death of more than 70 people, including children and women, as a result of poisoning with a chemical warfare agent in Syria has outraged the international community. The main version, which is being considered in the world press, is the bombardment of the village of Khan Sheikhun in the province of Idlib with chemical munitions, which was staged by the aviation of the government forces of Bashar al-Assad.
Russia insists on an alternative version - acknowledging the bombing, it claims that no chemical munitions were used, and a cloud of deadly gas, probably sarin, appeared after the bomb hit a chemical weapons warehouse belonging to an armed opposition group that was being delivered to Iraq.
Meanwhile, none of the parties has not provided convincing evidence of their correctness. Allegations of Syrian aviation involvement in chemical attack based primarily on eyewitness accounts.
Only one photograph of the munition rupture site, in which parts of it are visible, got into the press. But at the same time, no one has yet identified them as part of a chemical projectile, bomb or rocket.
The Russian Defense Ministry's claim that an opposition-owned chemical weapons facility was blown up is not supported by any intelligence, although Russian troops have at least unmanned aerial vehicles capable of taking aerial photographs.
The Syrian military also denies using chemical weapons, claiming that members of an opposition group sprayed the gas.
The international investigation team Bellingcat has been gathering evidence of what happened in the area on the morning of April 4th. Judging by the report released by the group, it is currently difficult to determine exactly how much ammunition was dropped, whether it was bombs or rockets. Some witnesses say helicopters were involved in the raid.
The report also says that after the civilians were poisoned, airstrikes were carried out on the hospitals where they were taken, without the use of chemical weapons.
The Syrian government, however, in recent years has not recorded and proven the use of such a strong poisonous substance as sarin.
cautious reaction
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons issued a statement condemning those behind the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but did not point to either side. "The OPCW Fact-Finding Team is collecting and analyzing information from all available sources," the statement said.
Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have not yet filed charges against either side of the conflict.
However, Human Rights Watch said in a statement that "Syria curtailed its chemical weapons program in 2013 after dozens of people were killed in a chemical attack on the outskirts of Damascus, probably by government forces."
"But this did not mean that the Syrian government forces stopped using chemical weapons. On the contrary, their use became regular in Syria. Human Rights Watch recorded dozens of cases when helicopters dropped containers of chlorine," the statement said. It also notes that the use of poisonous substances was also recorded by militants of the Islamic State group banned in Russia and a number of other countries.
Perhaps the only thing that no one seems to doubt is the very fact of the use of a poisonous substance, the victims of which were civilians, many of whom are children.
eyewitness accounts
Syria has been in a state of the most difficult and bloody civil war for several years, and reliable operational information getting out of the war zone is very difficult. Nevertheless, eyewitness accounts got into the press.
Mariam Abu Khalil, 14, told the New York Times that she saw the plane drop a bomb on a one-story building. After that, Mariam said, a yellow cloud rose above the explosion site, after which her eyes began to burn.
She described it as "fog". The girl took refuge in the house and then saw how people came running to help the victims. "They inhaled the gas and died," she said.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption After civilians were poisoned by sarin, medical aid stations were hit with conventional ammunitionHussein Kayal, a photographer from the opposition Idlib Medical Center, told The Associated Press that he was woken up by the sound of the explosion at around 6:30 am. When he arrived at the scene, he did not smell any. He saw people lying on the floor without moving. They had constricted pupils.
The head of the charity ambulance service in Idlib, Mohammed Rasool, told the BBC the time of the strike was around 6:45 am. After 20 minutes, his medical staff arrived at the scene and found people on the street, including children who were choking with a cough.
The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, which helps medical facilities in Syrian opposition-controlled territories, said three of its staff were injured while providing care at the scene.
According to the descriptions of the doctors of the Union, the victims had redness of the eyes, there was foam from the mouth, the pupils were constricted, the skin and lips turned blue, breathing was difficult up to complete suffocation.
Traceschemical attacks
Reuters released a photograph showing a crater from a munition explosion. It shows a large fragment, which, however, is difficult to judge the type of ammunition and its belonging.
In the past, during chemical attacks using chlorine, as well as after the use of conventional munitions against civilians or representatives of international organizations, images with fragments of ammunition appeared in the press immediately after these events, by which one could determine their type.
For example, after chlorine was used in the province of Idlib in 2015, Reuters published pictures of opposition representatives who showed containers with visible markings.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption An opposition group activist demonstrates a canister, which, according to the oppositionists, contained chlorine. This canister, according to the opposition, was used by Syrian troops in the province of Idlib in May 2015.After an air strike on a UN humanitarian convoy carrying medicines and food near Aleppo was carried out in September 2016, representatives of the Syrian civil defense detachment handed over Russian-made OFAB-250-270 high-explosive fragmentation bombs to the Bellingcat investigation team.
A few days after the shelling of the suburbs of Damascus in August 2013, a group of UN representatives was admitted to the place, who discovered, studied, measured and photographed fragments of rockets, which, according to the group, were indeed equipped with this poisonous substance.
In other words, the presence of fragments of ammunition serves as strong evidence of the very fact of the use of ammunition with a poisonous substance. In this case, since Russia does not deny the use of aviation in this area, and the opposition does not have planes or helicopters, this would be serious evidence.
Image copyright English MOD Image caption The Ministry of Defense released a video that the military claims shows an SUV carrying a mortar along a convoy in September 2016. No footage of the laboratory destroyed on April 5 was shown.Russia, in turn, announced that "Syrian aircraft struck a terrorist warehouse where there were arsenals of ammunition with chemical weapons that were delivered to Iraq."
"On the territory of this warehouse there were workshops for the production of land mines filled with poisonous substances. From this largest arsenal, ammunition with chemical weapons was delivered by militants to the territory of Iraq. Their use by terrorists has been repeatedly proven by both international organizations and the official authorities of this country," the spokesman said. Ministry of Defense of Russia Igor Konashenkov.
Russia did not provide any evidence that Assad's army aircraft really bombed an underground chemical laboratory. Meanwhile, the Russian group in Syria has reconnaissance assets, such as unmanned aerial vehicles. aircrafts, pictures from which could at least serve as an argument in this dispute.
After shelling a humanitarian convoy, the Ministry of Defense showed pictures that were taken from a drone, which clearly shows a car towing a mortar along the convoy.
As a spokesman told reporters on Thursday morning Russian President Dmitry Peskov, the Russian military has such materials. "There are means of objective control that the Russian armed forces have in the course of their operation, which they carry out in Syria," he said.
War poison
On Thursday afternoon, Turkish doctors who performed autopsies on the bodies of those killed in the chemical attack said they were . This statement was the first evidence that this gas was used in the attack.
Up to this point, the use of Sarin has been talked about informally, and judgments have been based largely on appearances. For example, sarin is practically colorless and odorless (and photographer Hussein Kayal drew attention to this circumstance).
This is the strongest poisonous substance, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a British chemical weapons expert, told the BBC. According to him, chlorine has been mainly used in Syria so far.
"All the victims in Aleppo for Last year, and especially in preparation for the evacuation before Christmas, suffered from chlorine. Most of it appears to have been sprayed from the air, and was sprayed by the [air] regime. The rebels may have somehow used chlorine in Aleppo to cause a large number of casualties, but chlorine is very different from sarin. By toxicological standards, if we take chlorine as a unit, then sarin will be 40,000,” he said.
Sarin can be stored in two forms - either as two or more components that can be mixed before use (this is very difficult task, which is performed on special equipment), or in its pure form.
Sarin is an unstable substance and it is very difficult to store it in its pure form. In addition, it is a chemically rather aggressive substance, and containers made of special materials, such as, for example, titanium, are used for storage.
Lev Fedorov, a Russian chemical weapons expert and president of the Union for Chemical Safety, told the BBC that under certain conditions, sarin can be stored for a long time.
A September 2013 report by the US Congressional Study Group states that sarin was stored in Syria in binary form, that is, in the form of two components.
In binary munitions, the two components of sarin are in separate containers and are mixed after the projectile is fired or the rocket or bomb is launched. Such ammunition is usually stored dismantled, and containers with components are placed in them before use.
Could there be sarin in the clandestine factory?
Sarin, according to Lev Fedorov, is very difficult to produce, and, according to him, it is simply impossible to do it in underground conditions.
"It's a tough task. Some chlorine or phosgene is all right, and sarin is a very difficult task," he said. According to Fedorov, chemists in the USSR after World War II spent several years just transporting sarin production at a chemical plant from Germany and localizing it in Stalingrad.
"It doesn't happen, it was either brought in, or it's fantasy," he said, answering the question whether the oppositionists could organize the production of the substance in clandestine conditions, as the Russian Defense Ministry claims.
He did not rule out that someone could "steal sarin from the Syrian army," but he emphasized that these are purely theoretical considerations and he has no information on this subject. It is not available in open sources either.
In neighboring Iraq, after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, munitions filled with sarin were discovered, which had been left in warehouses since the first Iraqi war in 1991.
Iraq was supposed to destroy them, but managed to hide them. In 2004, militants attempted to detonate a 152-millimeter artillery shell with sarin, but the explosive device made on its basis was defused.
Could the Syrian army have sarin?
Even before the start of the civil war, Syria had significant stockpiles of chemical warfare agents, including sarin and VX.
True, as stated in a report to the US Congress prepared in 2013, the Syrian regime was very dependent on the supply of substances necessary for the production of chemical weapons from abroad.
In 2014, under pressure from the international community, Syria agreed to destroy all stockpiles of chemical warfare agents and components for their production.
Within half a year. There is no unequivocal answer to the question of whether the supply of components or the substance itself could have remained in the hands of the Syrian military.
It is also unknown whether opposition groups could have had sarin.
Versions
The Syrian government has warplanes, and assuming that Damascus still has a stockpile of chemical weapons, it could theoretically use them. The facts of Syrian air strikes in this area are confirmed by witnesses, they are not denied in Moscow, the only question is whether they used chemical weapons.
The main drawback of this version is the lack of fragments of chemical munitions on the ground. The only photograph of the crater, which shows fragments of ammunition, did not allow experts to determine its type.
Igor Sutyagin, a senior researcher at the British Royal Joint Institute for Defense Research, told the BBC that, according to him, this can be explained by the use of pouring aviation devices - special devices for spraying liquid. Some witnesses spoke about the spraying of poisonous substances.
According to Sutyagin, the Syrians could produce sarin in a laboratory, and the lack of sophisticated chemical devices could lead to a decrease in the combat effectiveness of the poisonous substance.
"The main difficulty in it is associated with the purification of all those impurities that are present in the resulting product during production," he said.
In addition, Sutyagin believes that the Syrians did not necessarily use chemical munitions - it is possible to drop an ordinary container with sarin from an aircraft. By this he explains the absence of characteristic fragments of ammunition on the ground. However, these containers were also not found.
Syria is often accused of using poisonous agents against rebels after its chemical weapons were officially and under the control of the international community, but Sarin has not been used since the attack on the suburbs of Damascus.
The second version put forward by the Russian Ministry of Defense is that sarin was in the air as a result of the destruction of an underground laboratory and warehouse belonging to the opposition.
The presence of the laboratory is ruled out by expert Lev Fedorov, the impossibility of organizing production under these conditions is stated in another report by Bellingcat, published on Wednesday evening, Igor Sutyagin also considers this unlikely.
The assumption that the Syrian Air Force could destroy the warehouse with sarin is also criticized by experts. British chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told the BBC that in this case, the bomb would simply destroy the poisonous substance. "If you blow up sarin, you just burn it out," he told the BBC.
Bellingcat in its report says that if binary munitions were stored in the warehouse, then the explosion would burn out one of its components.
"Airstrike on the components of a binary nerve agent cannot serve as a mechanism for its synthesis. [...] One of these substances is isopropyl alcohol. As a result of an air strike, it would immediately burn out, forming a huge fireball, which was not observed at all, ”the report says.
Chemical weapons in Syria: whose trace? Broadcast at 21:05.
Discussed by Nasr Al-Yousef, Vil Mirzayanov, Zygmunt Dzencholovski, Alexander Shumilin
Russia considers unacceptable the UN resolution proposed by Western countries condemning the chemical attack in Syria.
According to the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, such a document should not be adopted, since it is “clearly anti-Syrian” and could further exacerbate the situation in the region.
Zakharova repeated the earlier information of the Russian Ministry of Defense that on April 4, Syrian aircraft attacked the eastern outskirts of the city of Khan Sheikhoun (Idlib province), destroying workshops where “militants produced ammunition with poisonous substances that were supplied to Iraq, and were also used in Aleppo".
The European Union and the United States blame the chemical attack on the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
The UN Security Council today will consider a resolution condemning the use of dangerous weapons in Syria.
On April 5, Syrian human rights activists announced an increase to 72 in the number of victims of an alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, which is held by rebels. Local doctors suspect that nerve gas was used.
The situation is discussed by chemical weapons expert Vil Mirzayanov, political scientists Nasr Al-Yousef, Alexander Shumilin, journalist Zygmunt Dzencholovski.
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- Russian journalist and TV presenter, member of the Russian Television Academy since 2007. On TV since 1992. In 1992-1993, he was senior editor of Yevgeny Kiselev's weekly program "Itogi" on the Ostankino State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (now Channel One). In 1993, together with Kiselev and other Itogi journalists, he moved to the first private national television company in Russia, NTV, founded in the same year by Vladimir Gusinsky. In 1993-1995, he was a correspondent for the information service of the NTV television company.
Since April 1995 - the author and presenter of the information and analytical program "Today at Midnight" on the NTV channel. Since March 2000 - also the author and host of the weekly historical program "Witness of the Century". During the conflict between the owner of the NTV television company Gusinsky and its main creditor, Gazprom, on the night of April 14, 2001, Vladimir Kara-Murza arrived at the editorial office of the TV channel on the 8th floor of the Ostankino television center, where he entered into a tough debate with representatives of Gazprom . On the same day, together with a group of leading NTV journalists, he wrote a letter of resignation from the channel, not wanting to work "under state control", and moved to the staff of Boris Berezovsky's television company TV-6.
From May 2001 to January 2002 - the author and presenter of the information and analytical program "Frontiers" on the TV-6 channel. The last broadcast of the program took place at 23.00 on January 21, 2002, an hour before the broadcasting of the TV-6 television company was turned off by order of the bailiffs. After the closure of TV-6, together with other journalists, including Yevgeny Kiselev and Mikhail Osokin, he joined the staff of the newly created TVS channel, which in March 2002 won the broadcasting competition and on June 1, 2002 began broadcasting on the "sixth button". From June 2002 to June 2003, Vladimir Kara-Murza was the host of the programs "Frontiers", "Place of the Press", "Extinguish the Light" and "Witnesses of the Century" on the TVS channel.
The TVS channel was taken off the air by order of the Ministry of Press of the Russian Federation on June 22, 2003. Since August 2003, Vladimir Kara-Murza has been the host of the Now in Russia information program on TV channel RTVi. Since 2005, he has also been working at Radio Liberty, where he hosts the daily program Edges of Time. In 2004, he became one of the founders of a member of the opposition "Committee-2008". Since 2006, he has been hosting the program “Edge of the Week with Vladimir Kara-Murza” on the RTVi channel and the Ekho Moskvy radio. From December 2011 to March 2012, he hosted the Main Week with Vladimir Kara-Murza program on the Network Public Television.
On October 26, the Joint Investigation Mechanism (JIM) of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established by a unanimous decision of the UN Security Council, concluded that the regime of Syrian President Bashar was responsible for the use of sarin in the April 4, 2017 attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Assad.As stated in a joint statement by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, their countries have full confidence in the conclusions of the JIM and believe in the professionalism and independence of this body.
The Syrian regime has violated international law, including the Chemical Weapons Convention. “We condemn this heinous act and demand that the Syrian regime immediately cease all use of chemical weapons and finally declare all of its chemical weapons stockpiles to the OPCW,” the document says.
The JIM also concluded that ISIL was responsible for a two-day mustard gas attack in the town of Oum Hush in September 2016. “We also condemn this heinous act and are united in our determination to end this terrorist movement once and for all. We condemn the use of chemical weapons, regardless of who does it and where," the foreign ministers of the four countries said in a statement.
The statement emphasizes: “We are unanimous in our opinion that it is extremely important that the international community continue to investigate cases of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. We call on the UN Security Council to maintain the JIM's investigative capacity. We also call on the OPCW Executive Council to take action on the JIM report and to make it clear that those involved in the use of chemical weapons will be held accountable.”
As Tillerson and his colleagues point out, unfortunately, this is not the first report identifying those responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. In 2016, the JIM concluded that the Syrian regime was responsible for the use of chlorine on at least three occasions in 2014 and 2015, and that ISIS used mustard gas once in 2015.
The document notes that the JIM still has a lot of work to do. The OPCW says it is "very likely" that Sarin was used in Khan Sheikhoun a week before the attack. locality Al-Latamin, and the characteristics of the attack are reminiscent of the actions of the Syrian regime.
“A strong international response is needed to bring the perpetrators to justice, achieve justice for the victims of these heinous attacks, and prevent similar attacks in the future. Following such a report, the UN Security Council and all its members have a shared responsibility to protect the international non-proliferation regime and fulfill prior commitments,” the statement said.
Vain hopes. Russia will block any resolution against Bashar al-Assad in the Security Council.
The British group of companies Chemring, which was accused of supplying poisonous substances to jihadists in Syria, found itself at the center of a similar scandal in Egypt almost six years ago. In addition, as already mentioned, her American company Chemring Military Products, Inc. is one of the main suppliers of Bulgarian weapons to the "moderate" opposition in Syria.
Yesterday Deputy Foreign Minister of Syria Faisal Miqdad stated that hand grenades and grenade launcher rounds, which are equipped with irritating poisonous substances CS and CN, were found in militant warehouses in Aleppo and in the eastern suburbs of Damascus. “The detected chemical munitions shown on the slide were produced by Federal Laboratories in the United States, and the poisonous agents were produced by Chemring Defense UK (UK) and NonLethal Technologies (USA),” said the deputy head of the Syrian Foreign Ministry.
“Here you have all the commitment to international law and the triumph of democracy. Hiding behind photographs of murdered children, supplying terrorists with poisonous substances is beyond comprehension,” said the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova. Representative of Russia to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said that information about the supply of chemical weapons to militants needs to be verified.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that the United States is supplying weapons to groups fighting the Islamic State banned in Russia, and chemicals have never been among them. Chemring said even more. "Chemring Defense does not produce chemical weapons or components that could be used in anything like that," a company spokesman told RIA Novosti.
It is curious that Chemring has already found itself at the epicenter of such scandals - in 2011 in Egypt. Then the country began Arab spring” with mass protests and during one of them in Tahrir Square in Cairo in November, 56 activists were killed. Three - from direct asphyxiation with gas. At the scene of the tragedy, at the same time, shots were found for grenade launchers with CS poisonous substance. The manufacturer listed them as Chemring Defense UK and Combined Systems Inc. Chemring confirmed that the shots belonged, but said they had not supplied poisonous substances to Egypt since 1998. At the same time, an investigation by the international human rights organization Amnesty International showed that since the beginning of 2011, three ships with weapons have been sent from the United States to Egypt. And in November, at least seven tons of “smoke cartridges” were delivered to the Egyptian port of Adabiya, which include shots with CS poisonous substance. Human rights activists appealed to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton investigate, but nothing has been heard from him since.
Chemring's 2011 supply of poisonous substances to Egypt caused an international scandal. Screenshot from theguardian.com
By the way, the delivery of the poisonous cargo in November 2011 was carried out by the ship Marianne Danica of the Danish Folmer & Co. In recent years, as already mentioned, Chemring has been using the company's ships to supply Bulgarian weapons to Syrian militants through Saudi Arabia.
In recent months, several Danish freight carriers have changed routes and, apparently, do not want to advertise them. For example, Marianne Danica indicated in July the route from British Portland to Italian Cagliari, and the final destination was the Kuwaiti Ash-Shuaiba, according to the Marinetraffic navigation portal. The type of cargo on board is Hazard A (Major), which means weapons and explosives.
Marianne Danica, with a cargo of weapons, seemed to be going from the UK to Italy ... Photo: marinetraffic.com. ...and came to Kuwait. Photo: marinetraffic.com.
Hanne Danica at the same time followed the alleged route of the American Wilmington-Egyptian Port Said. However, according to Vesselfinder, another navigation portal, it ended up in the capital of the UAE, Abu Dhabi. Recall that part of the weapons for the Syrian militants comes through this country.
Hanne Danica was only going to Egypt… Photo: marinetraffic.com. ... and reached right up to the UAE. Photo: vesselfinder.com.
Chemring itself announced in January a new $50 million order under the US state program to equip allies with non-NATO weapons. It is he who is being delivered to Syria. At the same time, as stated on the official website of the company, over the past year Chemring has received orders from the US government in the amount of more than $ 200 million.
Chemring is the 89th largest arms manufacturer in the world, with $543 million in revenue last year, according to Defense news. Among the products of Chemring Defense UK, grenades and shots for grenade launchers with CS poisonous substance are officially indicated.
A range of CS poison ammunition from Chemring Defense UK. Screenshot from chemringdefence.com.
The shots (cartridges) are exactly the same as those shown back in 2011 in Egypt.
CS shots found in Egypt. Photo: www.caat.org.uk. CS shots offered by Chemring Defense UK. Screenshot from chemringdefence.com.
CS, chlorobenzalmalonodinitrile, known in the USSR as "Lilac", irritates the eyes and upper respiratory tract in low concentrations, causes burns to exposed skin in high concentrations, in some cases respiratory paralysis, heart failure and death. Under the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, CS is prohibited from being used in war, but it is used by the police in many countries of the world, since the document only applies to military conflicts.
Recall that Western countries accuse Damascus of a chemical attack in the Syrian city of Khan Sheikhoun this year and do not pay attention to strong arguments that the chemical attack was a staged militant show.
Since in 2011 started in Syria Civil War which involves the state armed forces, the opposition, as well as Syrian Kurds and Islamic terrorist organizations, use of chemical weapons in different regions of the country has become a frequent occurrence.
Moreover, it has always been difficult for the world community to establish who strikes: the parties each time "transfer arrows" to each other. But the result remains unchanged: after inhalation of toxic substances, civilians suffer and die.
In 2012 the first reports of the use of chemical weapons in Syria began to appear, after which the incumbent US President Barack Obama set a “red line” for the regime Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria. The American politician said that if the world community learns about the use of toxic substances by Assad, then “this is a game changer” and will entail outside interference. But despite his words, in 2013 there was a series of five major chemical attacks, further investigated UN.
The first mass use of chemical weapons took place March 19, 2013 when in the suburbs of the largest Syrian city of Aleppo, Khan el Asal, a rocket was launched with toxic substances, presumably sarin gas. More than a hundred people were injured in the attack, 16 of whom died. The government and the opposition blamed each other.
Less loud was the second incident, the details of which are much more speculation than reliable data. The BBC reports that April 29 the same year from a helicopter to the city Saraqeb at least two poison gas devices were dropped. Eight people were injured and one woman died.
Almost four months later, August 21, in one of the suburbs of Damascus, goute under control opposition, there was one of the largest missile attacks in terms of the number of victims using sarin. There is no single agreed-upon information on the number of victims, but on average, this 500-1,300 human.
This tragedy seriously disturbed the world community, which could not stand aside. Major powers like USA and Russia divided over who is right and who is wrong. Russia has taken the side of the Assad regime, which shifts the responsibility onto the shoulders of the opposition. USA, France, Turkey, Canada, Saudi Arabia on the contrary, they blamed the official government of Syria.
Chemical attacks were the last straw for these countries. 24 August in Jabar and the next day at Ashrafiye-Sakhnae, after which the states began to prepare for military intervention in Syria. Assad came to the aid of Russia, which managed to negotiate with the United States and resolve the situation in a different way.
In September 2013 the Syrian government signed Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and by the beginning of the summer of 2014, it allegedly surrendered all available chemical weapons.
However, poisonous substances have been used more than once in Syria. The most notorious incidents were bombings Talmanes April 21, 2014 and Sarmina March 16, 2015. In both cases, the chemical weapon component was chlorine. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, backed by the United Nations, found the Syrian government responsible. Russia opposed.
In a chemical attack that happened just the other day, April, 4, in the northern province of Idlib, the city Khan Sheikhoun, US blames Assad. And so Donald Trump took a decisive step: on the Syrian air base, where, presumably, the government planes used chemical weapons were located.
Vladimir Putin USA as a violation of international law. Russia has a different vision of the situation. According to them, the Syrian air force attacked an opposition warehouse where chemical weapons were stored.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Says Chemical Weapons Killed 72 people among which there are children. The total number of victims is approx. 300 people. There are still disputes about the type of poisonous substance. The most popular versions are sarin or chlorine. Data on ammunition, which can be either bombs or missiles, has not been finally established.
History: military conflict in Syria and the use of chemical weapons updated: March 30, 2019 by: Marina Dashchenko
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