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| Britain's United Nations Ambassador Matthew Rycroft speaks during a meeting of the Security Council on Syria at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, April 5, 2017. Rycroft said the attack in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province "bears all the hallmarks" of President Bashar Assad's regime and the Britain believes a nerve agent capable of killing over a hundred people was used. |
BEIRUT
(AP) -- Diplomats at the U.N. Security council sparred Wednesday over
whether to hold President Bashar Assad's government responsible for a
chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people in northern
Syria, while U.S. intelligence officials, Doctors Without Borders and
the U.N. healthy agency said evidence pointed to nerve gas exposure.
The
Trump administration and other world leaders said the Syrian government
was to blame, but Moscow, a key ally of Assad, said the assault was
caused by a Syrian airstrike that hit a rebel stockpile of chemical
arms.
Early U.S. assessments showed the use of
chlorine gas and traces of the nerve agent sarin in the attack Tuesday
that terrorized the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, according to two U.S.
officials who weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and
demanded anonymity.
Israeli military
intelligence officers also believe Syrian government forces were behind
the attack, Israeli defense officials told the Associated Press. Israel
believes Assad has tons of chemical weapons still in his arsenal,
despite a concerted operation three years ago by the Organization for
the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to rid the government of its
stockpile, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because they weren't authorized to brief the media. Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan also blamed the Syrian government for the attack.
In
Khan Sheikhoun, rescue workers found terrified survivors still hiding
in shelters as another wave of airstrikes battered the town Wednesday.
Those strikes appeared to deliver only conventional weapons damage.
Among
those discovered alive were two women and a boy found hiding in a
shelter beneath their home, the Civil Defense search and rescue group
told the AP.
The effects of the attack
overwhelmed hospitals around the town, leading paramedics to send
patients to medical facilities across rebel-held areas in northern
Syria, as well as to Turkey. The Turkish Health Ministry said three
victims died receiving treatment inside its borders. The Britain-based
Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights monitoring group put the toll at 86
killed.
Victims of the attack showed signs of
nerve gas exposure, the World Health Organization and Doctors Without
Borders said, including suffocation, foaming at the mouth, convulsions,
constricted pupils and involuntary defecation. Paramedics were using
fire hoses to wash the chemicals from the bodies of victims.
Medical
teams also reported smelling bleach on survivors of the attack,
suggesting chlorine gas was also used, Doctors Without Borders said.
The
magnitude of the attack was reflected in the images of the dead -
children piled in heaps for burial, a father carrying his lifeless young
twins.
The visuals from the scene were
reminiscent of a 2013 nerve gas attack on the suburbs of Damascus that
left hundreds dead and prompted an agreement brokered by the U.S. and
Russia to disarm Assad's chemical stockpile. Western nations blamed
government forces for that attack, where effects were concentrated on
opposition-held areas.
At the Vatican, Pope
Francis said during his general audience that he was "watching with
horror at the latest events in Syria," and that he "strongly deplored
the unacceptable massacre."
Tuesday's attack
happened just 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Turkish border, and the
Turkish government - a close ally of Syrian rebels - set up a
decontamination center at a border crossing in the province of Hatay,
where the victims were initially treated before being moved to
hospitals.
At the United Nations, U.S.
Ambassador Nikki Haley warned the Trump administration would take action
if the Security Council did not in response to the attack.
"When
you kill innocent children, innocent babies - babies, little babies -
with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what
gas it was, that crosses many, many lines," Donald Trump said in the
White House Rose Garden. The president declined to say what the U.S.
would do in response, but he did say that his "attitude towards Syria
and Assad has changed very much."
The council
was convened in an emergency session to consider a resolution that would
back an investigation by the chemical weapons watchdog into the attack
and compel the Syrian government to cooperate with a probe. It was
drafted by the U.S., Britain and France.
Syria's
government denied it carried out any chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun,
but Russia's Defense Ministry said the toxic agents were released when a
Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions
factory on the town's eastern outskirts.
British
Ambassador Matthew Rycroft dismissed that account, saying the U.K. had
seen nothing that would suggest rebels "have the sort of chemical
weapons that are consistent with the symptoms that we saw yesterday."
Diplomats
were also meeting in Brussels for a major donors' conference on the
future of Syria and the region. Representatives from 70 countries were
present.
A top Syrian rebel representative
said he held U.N. mediator Staffan De Mistura "personally responsible"
for the attack. Mohammad Alloush, the rebels' chief negotiator at
U.N.-mediated talks with the Syrian government, said the envoy must
begin labeling the Syrian government as responsible for killing
civilians. He said the U.N.'s silence "legitimizes" the strategy.
"The
true solution for Syria is to put Bashar Assad, the chemical weapons
user, in court, and not at the negotiations table," said Alloush, who is
an official in the Islam Army rebel faction.
Syria's
rebels, and the Islam Army in particular, are also accused of human
rights abuses in Syria, but rights watchdogs attribute the overwhelming
portion of civilian causalities over the course of the six-year war to
the actions of government forces and their allies.
