The use of chemical weapons in Syria. Peace "People on the streets are dying of suffocation." Syria uses chemical weapons. "We sit on the fence and watch." Israel's response to chemical attacks in Syria

Chemical weapons may have been used again in Syria.

In the province of Idlib, an alleged gas attack has killed at least 100 people, and another 400 suffer from respiratory problems.

The West blamed the chemical attack on the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Damascus denied the use of banned weapons.

Earlier in the Syrian war, there were repeated reports of the use of chemical weapons.

Correspondent.net understand what happened in Syria.

New attack

Residents of the Syrian city of Khan Sheikhouneh in the northwestern province of Idlib were subjected to a chemical attack.

The Syrian Human Rights Monitoring Center was the first to report this.

The footage from Khan Sheikhoun is truly shocking.

Attention! The video contains shocking footage.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

The death toll could rise, said the Union of Medical Institutions, partly based in Paris, a coalition of international humanitarian agencies that support medical institutions in Syria.

"Since 06:30 we have seen more than 40 strikes. The number of victims continues to rise due to the bombing throughout the province," the doctors said.

Western reaction

The main responsibility for the chemical attack in the Syrian province of Idlib lies with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said.

“Obviously, this is a direct responsibility on the part of the regime, because its main responsibility is to protect its people,” she stressed.

US President Donald Trump also blamed Assad for the chemical attack in Syria and said that it was the result of bad decisions by the previous US administration.

"These heinous actions by Bashar al-Assad are the result of the weakness and indecision of the previous administration," Trump said in a statement.

As the president noted, in 2012 his predecessor, Barack Obama, announced his intention to create a "red line" regarding the use of chemical weapons, but then "did nothing." "The United States, along with its allies, condemn this unacceptable attack," Trump said.

What do Assad say

In Damascus, in turn, denied involvement in the attack.

Government forces say they have not used and do not use chemical weapons because they do not have them.

Russia's position

At the Ministry of Defense Russian Federation also denied reports that Russian aircraft attacked the settlement of Khan Sheikhun in Syria.

Later, the Russian Defense Ministry said that residents of the Syrian province of Idlib suffered from chemical weapons stored in terrorist warehouses.

According to Moscow, on April 4, Syrian aircraft attacked a warehouse in the city of Khan Sheikhoun, where there were toxic substances.

"These munitions with poisonous substances were also used by militants in the Syrian Aleppo, when their use was recorded at the end of last year by Russian military specialists," Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the department, said in a press release distributed on Wednesday night.

Not the first time

According to studies by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, chlorine, sulfur mustard and sarin have been repeatedly used by various parties in the Syrian war.

In 2013, as a result of the spraying of chemical warfare agents near Damascus, about 1.4 thousand people were killed.

According to a UN investigation, on the night of August 21, 2013, several rockets with warheads containing a total of about 350 liters of sarin, a nerve agent of the paralytic type, were fired at populated areas.

The Syrian authorities and the opposition blamed each other for what happened. International assessments of events also differ: the United States and 36 other countries accuse Syrian government forces of using chemical weapons, Russia and Iran accuse the armed opposition of the attack.

Later, a plan was proposed to destroy chemical weapons in Syria. The destruction of Syrian chemical weapons was carried out in international waters on the American vessel Cape Ray equipped with special hydrolysis equipment.

The removal of chemical weapons was completed on June 23, 2014. At the same time, the fate of the chemical weapons, which were located in the territories not controlled by the Syrian government, is unknown.

In March 2017, UN experts accused the troops of Bashar al-Assad of using chlorine gas during the assault on Aleppo and other cities under the control of the opposition.

Also that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in recent months the battle for Aleppo, according to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch.

“During the period from November 17 to December 13, 2016, human rights activists recorded at least eight episodes when government helicopters dropped chlorine on residential areas of Aleppo. people were injured," the organization's report says.

Who benefits?

It is worth noting the trend - chemical attacks in Syria were carried out every time when things were going badly for the rebels. This was traditionally followed by plans to bomb the government troops of Bashar al-Assad.

Recently, the situation in the Syrian conflict has evolved just in favor of the official Damascus.

At the same time, one should not forget that the process of eliminating chemical weapons that belonged to the Syrian government was controlled by international organizations, but no one was involved in chemical arsenals on the territory of the rebels.

The use of chemical weapons is prohibited by the 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and Their Destruction.

Who exactly was behind the attack, is not reported.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed use of chlorine and sarin in the Syrian province Hama in March 2017.

This is stated in the message of the organization, reports RBC.

We are talking about the attacks on March 24 and 25 in the settlement of Al-Lataminah in northern Syria. According to OPCW experts, Sarin was used in the first case, and chlorine was used in the second. Who specifically was behind the attack using chemical weapons, is not reported.

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The organization found evidence of chemical attacks after conducting an epidemiological analysis of victims and samples environment in these territories.

The OPCW submitted its report and the results of the study to all its member countries and to the UN Security Council.

On April 14, US President Donald Trump issued an emergency statement stating that the armed forces of the United States, Britain and France attacked Syrian facilities linked to chemical weapons.

Later, The New York Times newspaper, citing representatives of the British Ministry of Defense, reported that four British Panavia Tornado fighter-bombers who fired Storm Shadow cruise missiles at a facility near the city of Homs where chemical weapons were allegedly secretly stored.

Damascus said that these missile attacks on Syria are a gross violation of international laws. And state television noted that Western media significantly exaggerate the results of night airstrikes. They showed an appeal by the Ministry of Information of the country, in which citizens are urged "not to pay attention to any media reports."

The situation with the alleged "chemical attack" of government troops in Syrian Idlib is gradually clearing up. Recall that earlier the UN demanded to find those responsible for the attack with the use of chemical weapons. At the same time, it was immediately clear that the “responsible” UN wanted to find among the Assad forces. This was stated by the UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.

"What happened this morning, we discussed it with (head of EU diplomacy) Federica Mogherini, it's terrible. We demand, and the UN will demand, and I'm sure that there will be a meeting of the UN Security Council on this issue, to determine responsibility," said de Mistura reporters on joint press conference with Mogherini.

However, the further, the more obvious it becomes that there was no chemical attack - and, in fact, could not be. On the this moment experts unanimously declare that if there were poisonous substances, they most likely belonged to the "opposition" and terrorists.

"The media are promoting the version that Assad's troops used chemical weapons in Idlib. Complete (fig) ota, because all the hostilities in the region are led by our General Staff. Without a decision from the headquarters of the group in Khmeimim, Assad now not a single plane will take off, not a single the gun won't fire.Many today will write that it's like the Red Army decided to use chemical weapons against barmaley, but with this version immediately to psychiatrists.

Regarding the circulation of WMD, there are very respected international agreements, which only the 3rd World War can violate. And stop, finally, studying the words of General Konashenkov under a microscope. He is now writing such boobies texts that it becomes scary for military journalism. Only those who were dropped head down on the stairs in childhood remained in his department, normal men fled long ago to other floors," the expert's telegram channel writes.

Meanwhile, Igor Dimitriev, who is currently located directly in Syria, voices himself Facebook has about the same rating. Among other things, supplemented by calculations on the disposition and actions of government troops.

“Yesterday I was in the vicinity of Hama. Government troops repulsed the attack of the Islamists and launched an offensive against Idlib. Khan Shaykhun is blocking the road from Damascus to Aleppo, the main road of the country, and therefore is of strategic importance. The CAA has no tactical or informational grounds for using gas. The attack is on. And theoretically, it’s hard to even imagine why Assad would want to set himself up like that,” Dimitriev writes.

In addition, he voiced his version of what happened: “But even if there was still mass gassing in Idlib, then the Syrians are more likely to be right, who say that they managed to bomb the chemical laboratory. Moreover, all the really confirmed facts of the use of chemical warfare agents are relevant only to the opposition. The government handed over the existing chemical weapons to an international commission two years ago. And on the territory recaptured from the Islamists, laboratories with the remnants of military substances have been found more than once.”

And this version, in all likelihood, is completely true. Information about the attack on terrorist positions has been officially confirmed. Government forces reportedly carried out airstrikes on the outskirts of locality Khan Sheikhoun in the province of Idlib. There was a warehouse of ammunition of terrorists and a cluster of military equipment.

It is known for certain that on the territory of the warehouse there were workshops for the production of land mines filled with poisonous substances. The chemical weapons were then delivered to Iraq. It can be assumed that it was the explosion in the warehouse that led to the leakage of poisonous substances and subsequent casualties.

However, the national coalition of the opposition and revolutionary forces of Syria (NCORS) announced an attack by government troops using chemical weapons, as a result of which 80 people were killed and 200 were injured. The UN supported their point of view. But, as it turns out now, it is not Assad's troops who are at all guilty of using banned military substances.

More than 60 people were killed in a gas attack in the Syrian city of Khan Shaykhun.

Initially, the Syrian Monitoring Center for Human Rights (London) reported 35 victims, but according to the medical service, their number is growing.

“These patients have clear signs of an organophosphorus attack,” says volunteer doctor Shayul Islyam. - The hospital is overflowing with patients who have suffered from some kind of chemical. It's not chlorine, we don't smell chlorine."

Eyewitnesses: Airstrikes inflicted by government troops

In the same time informational portal Orient News, which supports the Syrian opposition, reported more than 40 dead: “Al-Assad's planes carried out three airstrikes. During one of them poisonous gas was used. The symptoms we are seeing are not caused by chlorine poisoning - those affected are salivating. We still have about 100 wounded and many of them stuck under the rubble.”

The Syrian authorities agreed to destroy the chemical weapons in 2013, but a UN investigation later uncovered at least three cases of chemical weapons being used in 2014 and 2015. On the eve of the chemical attack, US representative to the UN Nikki Haley strongly condemned the actions of the Syrian authorities and President Bashar al-Assad personally.

“Syria is something that worries us a lot. We have no love for al-Assad, we make it very clear. We think he hindered peace for a long time. I think he is a war criminal and what he is doing to his people is more than disgusting,” said Nikki Haley, US Representative to the UN.

Khan Shaykhun is held by the Syrian opposition, which blames government forces for what happened. The al-Assad regime, in turn, denies the use of chemical weapons. Meanwhile, ambulance service workers confirm that many victims on the streets of the city do not have time to save, people die of suffocation.

Igor Vinyavsky/IC

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 bombing 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 alternative version- acknowledging the fact of the bombing, she states that chemical munitions were not used, and the cloud lethal gas, likely sarin, came about after a bomb hit an armed opposition group's chemical weapons depot that was being shipped to Iraq.

Meanwhile, none of the parties has not provided convincing evidence of their correctness. Allegations of Syrian aviation involvement in the chemical attack are based largely 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.

Statement Russian ministry defense of the explosion of an opposition-owned chemical weapons facility 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 establish 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 says.

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 grave and bloody conflict for several years now. civil war, and reliable operational information from the combat zone is very difficult to obtain. 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.

Photographer from the opposition " medical center Idlib" Hussein Kayal told the Associated Press that he woke up from the sound of the explosion at about 6:30. When he arrived at the scene, he did not smell any. He saw people who were lying on the floor without moving. Their pupils were constricted.

The head of the charity ambulance service in Idlib, Mohammed Rasool, told the BBC the time of the strike was around 6:45 a.m. 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 institutions in Syrian opposition-controlled territories, said three of his staff were injured while assisting 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.

After an airstrike on a UN humanitarian convoy carrying medicines and food near Aleppo 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. AT 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.

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 intelligence assets at its disposal, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, images from which could at least serve as an argument in this dispute.

After the shelling of the 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 are carrying 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 mainly on external signs. For example, sarin is practically colorless and odorless (and photographer Hussein Kayal drew attention to this circumstance).

This is the strongest poisonous substance, British chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon 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. Perhaps the rebels somehow used chlorine in Aleppo to cause big number victims, but chlorine is very different from sarin. In terms of toxicological measures, 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.

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 found 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 only to transport Sarin production at a chemical plant from Germany and localize 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, sarin-filled munitions were discovered that had been left in warehouses since the first Iraq 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 disadvantage of this version is the absence 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. In an airstrike, it would immediately burn up, forming a huge fire ball, which was not observed at all," the report says.