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Syria 'chemical' attack: what we know
 by Staff Writers
 Beirut (AFP) April 6, 2017


Accident theory in Syria attack 'fanciful': experts
Paris (AFP) April 6, 2017 - Chemical weapons experts have thrown doubt on Russian claims the attack that killed more than 80 civilians in rebel-held Syria could have been caused by an air strike on a "warehouse" containing toxic agents.

The Syrian regime's ally Russia has sought to deflect an international outcry aimed at Damascus by claiming that Syrian air strikes had hit a warehouse where "toxic substances" were stored and that they were released by the explosion.

Olivier Lepick, a French expert with decades of experience of chemical weapons, told AFP on Thursday that the theory advanced by the Russians was "completely fanciful".

"It would almost make you laugh if the situation was not so serious," said Lepick, a researcher at France's Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS).

"On a technical level, it doesn't stand up for a single moment," he added.

The expert said the way the agent was dispersed, according to witnesses in the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhun, was consistent with an phenomenon known as aerosolization.

Such an effect can only be caused by a military-grade chemical weapon and cannot be provoked by an accidental explosion, Lepick said.

"When you look at the areas of impact and the way people have been affected, you can see clearly that this is a munition that has been designed to deliver a chemical agent, in other words to produce an explosion, with a high degree of aerosolization," he said.

"In other words, it was the most effective way of dispersing the chemical agent."

If an airstrike had hit a warehouse where the toxic agent was being stored, it would have created a "toxic cloud", but the agent would not have been effectively dispersed into the air, he said.

"It was clearly a military chemical weapon that was used here. It was not a leak from a warehouse," he added.

- 'Russians protecting ally' -

Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who was formerly head of the British army's Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment, said he had come to the same conclusion after speaking to doctors treating victims at the scene.

"The Russians are trying to protect their ally," he told BBC radio on Wednesday, the day after the attack.

"If you blow up a sarin (gas) depot, you destroy it. It is pretty clear that this is a sarin attack, a nerve agent.

"The view that it's an Al-Qaeda or rebel stockpile of sarin that's been blown up in an explosion is completely unsustainable and completely untrue."

Syria has denied claims that its army released the nerve agent and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem repeated the regime's denial on Thursday.

"The Syrian army has not, did not and will not use this kind of weapons -- not just against our own people, but even against the terrorists that attack our civilians with their mortar rounds," he said.

US President Donald Trump called the attack "an affront to humanity" and a US official said Thursday the Pentagon was preparing to present a range of possible military options in response.

However, Julien Legros, a researcher at France's national scientific research centre (CNRS) said he believed the Russian theory was not "out of the question".

He argued that it was theoretically possible that the contents of the toxic agent were stored in the same barrel and an explosion caused by an air strike could have caused a chemical reaction which turned the gas into a toxic gas.

A large part of the substance would have been destroyed in such a strike, "but if even 10 percent of it had become vapour, that 10 percent would have been deadly".

"If 10 milligrammes is enough to kill a person and you have 10 percent of a tonne, then you have more than enough to kill several hundred people," he said.

An air strike hit rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria on Tuesday morning, leaving dozens of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Thursday denied government forces dropped chemical weapons on the town, after regime ally Russia said "toxic substances" may have been released when a "terrorist warehouse" was struck.

The air strike by regime forces attacked an arms depot belonging to jihadists "that contained chemical weapons", according to Muallem.

The death toll in the town of Idlib province has risen to 86, 30 of them children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, with more than 160 wounded and others missing.

Turkey said the autopsies of three of those killed in Khan Sheikhun confirmed that chemical weapons had been used by President Bashar al-Assad's regime, who France said would one day be tried as a "war criminal".

Western powers have pushed ahead with efforts to take action against the Damascus regime over the killings and US President Donald Trump has warned it will not go unanswered.

- What happened? -

Air strikes hit the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun on Tuesday morning, and residents reported finding entire families "dead in their beds".

Local medics told AFP they had treated cases of suffocation, convulsions, pinpoint pupils, and rapid pulses.

The World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said victims showed symptoms consistent with the possible use of a nerve agent, such as sarin.

Residents were rushed to clinics inside the town and wider province, and some victims were taken across the border for treatment in Turkey.

The gruesome footage and harrowing testimony emerging from Khan Sheikhun have sparked international outrage.

- Who was behind it? -

Syria's opposition and jihadists have accused the government of carrying out the strike.

But Syria's army "categorically" denied the claims, saying it had never used chemical weapons "any time, anywhere, and will not do so in the future".

The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria and the UN's chemical arms watchdog have said they are working to determine whether chemical substances were used.

- How has the world reacted? -

US President Donald Trump warned that the "affront to humanity" would not go unanswered, as France pressed for a UN Security Council resolution demanding an investigation.

The draft resolution backs a probe by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and demands Syria provide information on its operations.

Moscow, which has said a Syrian air strike hit a "terrorist warehouse" containing toxic materials, said that Western charges against Damascus over the "monstruous crime" were not based on "objective materials or evidence".

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that he was "100 percent sure" that Assad had ordered a chemical attack, without giving proof.

- When have chemical weapons been used? -

If confirmed as an attack, Khan Sheikhun would rank among the worst incidents of chemical weapons use in Syria's civil war, which has killed more than 320,000 people since it began in March 2011.

Syria's government officially joined the Chemical Weapons Convention and turned over its chemical arsenal in 2013, as part of a deal to avert US military action.

That agreement came after hundreds of people -- up to 1,429 according to a US intelligence report -- were killed in chemical weapons strikes allegedly carried out by Syrian troops near Damascus.

But there have been repeated allegations of chemical weapons use by the government since, with a UN-led investigation pointing the finger at the regime for at least three chlorine attacks in 2014 and 2015.

The Islamic State jihadist group was also found to have used mustard gas in a 2015 attack in Syria.

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