Dozens killed in suspected chemical weapons attack on rebel-held city near Damascus, activists say – By Nabih Bulos (latimes.com) / April 8 2018
Dozens of people were killed in an apparent chemical weapons attack on a suburb of Damascus after troops loyal to the government restarted their offensive to take back the last rebel-held bastion near the capital, opposition activists, medics and rescue workers said Sunday.
The Syrian American Medical Society, a Washington-based relief organization that supports health facilities in the area, said at least 42 people died in the attack, which took place during shelling Saturday night in the city of Douma in eastern Ghouta.
More than 500 others were brought to local medical centers with symptoms indicative of exposure to a chemical agent, including signs of respiratory distress, excessive foaming at the mouth and the emission of a chlorine-like odor, the group said in a statement.
The Syria Civil Defense, a team of first responders working in opposition areas, put the death toll at at least 70, most of them women and children who had been hiding in basements they use as makeshift bomb shelters.
The attack, it said, was carried out by a Syrian government helicopter which dropped a “barrel bomb” filled with an unidentified chemical agent. Barrel bombs are typically built from oil drums or water tanks that are filled with explosives and metal detritus.
The rescue group also known as the White Helmets uploaded graphic videos on social media showing glassy-eyed corpses of women and children with white foam oozing out of their nostrils and mouths.
“There’s a powerful smell here,” says one person off-camera as he and other activists go through a building searching for victims.
The videos could not be independently verified.
The attack took place during an intense barrageas loyalist forces pressed their offensive on Douma , according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition watchdog based in Britain.
At least 11 of the victims, it said, suffocated to death because of smoke inhalation in their basements.
“We’re talking about hundreds of airstrikes, rockets and mortars on a small area,” Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Observatory, said by phone Sunday. “People don’t have the ability to withstand this amount of smoke.”
He could not confirm the use of chemical weapons.
The Syrian government was quick to deny the charge. The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency quoted an unidentified military source as saying that “an army that is progressing quickly… does not need to use any kind of chemical weapons.”
The Syrian government “was determined to end terrorists on every inch of its lands,” the source said, adding that “the charades of chemical [attacks]” would not “help the terrorists.”
Damascus considers all rebels to be terrorists aided by its regional and international enemies.
The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it was closely following the “disturbing reports… regarding another alleged chemical weapons attack.”
“These reports, if confirmed, are horrifying and demand an immediate response by the international community,” it said.
The statement added that the government’s use of chemical weapons in the past “is not in dispute” but said Russia, a key international backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, “ultimately bears responsibility for these brutal attacks, targeting of countless civilians, and the suffocation of Syria’s most vulnerable communities with chemical weapons.”
The latest suspected attack came after the breakdown of Russian-backed negotiations between the Syrian government and the Army of Islam, the dominant rebel faction in Douma. On Friday, loyalist troops had restarted their offensive on the enclave and were already reported to have breached its outer perimeter.
More than 1,600 people have been reported killed since government troops, backed by Russian air power, launched a ferocious campaign to take back eastern Ghouta in February.
In recent weeks, the government had offered to rebels the now-standard deal it has extended to other besieged areas of the country, granting safe passage to those who refuse to lay down their arms to leave to the rebel-held province of Idlib in the country’s northwest.
Tens of thousands of people have since been bused from the region to Idlib, including fighters from Faylaq al Rahman and Ahrar al Sham, Islamist groups backed by Qatar and Turkey.
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-chemical-attack-20180408-story.html
