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Syrians Were Poisoned by Banned Nerve Agent Sarin, Turkey Says Banned Nerve Agent Sarin Used in Syria Chemical Attack, Turkey Says
(about 2 hours later)
ISTANBUL — The poison used in the deadly chemical bomb attack in a rebel-held part of northern Syria this week was the banned nerve agent sarin, the Turkish Health Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.ISTANBUL — The poison used in the deadly chemical bomb attack in a rebel-held part of northern Syria this week was the banned nerve agent sarin, the Turkish Health Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
The statement from Turkey, where many of the stricken Syrians were taken after the assault on Tuesday, was the most specific about the cause.The statement from Turkey, where many of the stricken Syrians were taken after the assault on Tuesday, was the most specific about the cause.
“According to the results of preliminary tests,” the statement said, “patients were exposed to chemical material (Sarin).”“According to the results of preliminary tests,” the statement said, “patients were exposed to chemical material (Sarin).”
Western countries have accused the Syrian government of the chemical attack, one of the worst so far in the six-year-old Syria war. Syria has repeatedly denied responsibility. Western countries have accused the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad of carrying out the chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province, which left scores dead and hundreds sickened in one of the worst atrocities so far in the six-year-old Syria war.
The Syrian government has denied responsibility. Russia, its main ally, has accused Mr. Assad’s enemies of rushing to judgment and has threatened to veto a United Nations Security Council measure condemning the assault.
The Turkish statement said the sarin conclusion had been based on autopsies on three victims performed at Turkey’s Adana Forensic Medicine Institution with the participation of representatives from the World Health Organization and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a group based in The Hague that monitors compliance with the global treaty that bans such munitions.
Mr. Assad’s government signed that treaty less than four years ago and agreed to give up its chemical arsenal after the first major chemical weapons attack in Syria, which left hundreds dead near Damascus.
Western governments accused the Syrian military of carrying out that attack, in August 2013, in which sarin was identified as the poison. It led President Barack Obama to threaten a direct military intervention in the conflict — an option he abandoned when Mr. Assad agreed to sign the chemical weapons ban.
The Turkish statement did not elaborate on how the sarin had been identified in the assault on Tuesday, but it said some of the telling symptoms seen in the victims included “lung edema, increase in lung weight and bleeding in lungs.”
The statement was issued hours after Syria’s foreign minister challenged accounts by witnesses, experts and world leaders that his government had carried out the attack.
“I stress to you once again: 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,” the minister, Walid al-Moallem, said at a news conference in Damascus.
Mr. Moallem repeated an explanation, which experts say is implausible, that the toxic substances were dispersed after the Syrian Army had conducted an 11:30 a.m. air raid on an insurgent depot that he said contained chemical weapons.
His statement echoed a Russian account of what had happened that witnesses and Western leaders say is contradicted by the evidence.
Mr. Moallem asserted that Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, commonly called Al Nusra Front, and its main jihadist rival, the Islamic State, harbor illicit chemical weapons in Syria.
Asked whether Syria would present proof that it was not involved in the attack, Mr. Moallem responded, “How am I supposed to go to Khan Sheikhoun if it’s held by Al Nusra?”
At least 86 people were killed in the assault including 28 children, according to a tally from the health department in rebel-held Idlib Province, but that may not include victims sent to Turkey who have died. Some officials including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey have said the attack killed more than 100 people. Unicef said in a statement on Thursday that 546 people were injured, “among them many children.”
Independent evidence continued to suggest that the Syrian military was to blame.
Dr. Monzer Khalil, the health director of Idlib Province, said medical teams had collected samples of blood, urine, hair and clothing from the victims and of soil and other materials in the areas where the poison spread. The samples were being preserved and offered to international agencies and governments as evidence, he said in an interview via Skype.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has in the past refused to accept samples not collected by its own teams and has accepted others but given them less credibility as evidence, according to Syrians who have worked for years to collect samples from what were suspected to be attacks.
Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Tugrul Turkes, told the state-run Anadolu Agency on Thursday that the Russian explanation was “unfulfilling.”
“If the Syrian regime knew that there were chemical weapons in the warehouse, it should have also known that it should not have attacked it,” he said.
He added that he believed the attack “was the work of the regime and that it was an attack against civilians.”
In Russia, officials said the case against Mr. Assad was far from clear.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, warned the West on Thursday against rushing to blame Mr. Assad.
He said that the West lacked objective evidence, and that materials presented by the White Helmets, a Syrian humanitarian group, did not suffice as proof.
“The use of chemical weapons is absolutely inadmissible,” Mr. Peskov said, adding that the Syrian Army must act to “prevent any chemical agents that can be used as weapons from falling into the terrorists’ hands.”
Later on Thursday, however, Mr. Peskov said that the Russian government supported a full investigation into the attack and that the Kremlin’s support for Mr. Assad’s government was “not unconditional.”
The Russian-Syrian posture came under immediate attack from Western leaders, including President Trump, who had urged his predecessor, Mr. Obama, in 2013 not to intervene in Syria. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that the chemical attack had “crossed a lot of lines for me,” and added, “My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.” He did not specify his plans.
France, Britain and the United States have circulated a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council condemning the attack and demanding Syria’s cooperation — including access to all military flight logs of Syrian aircraft operating in Idlib during the attack.
Diplomats negotiating the draft resolution said they expected to put it up for a vote late Thursday. It remained unclear whether Russia would veto the measure, which would make it the eighth veto by Russia of a Security Council resolution regarding Syria.
Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said he “cannot understand how anybody on the U.N. Security Council could fail to sign up to a motion condemning the actions of the regime that is almost certainly responsible for that crime.”
Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, took a more moderate stance, telling CNews television that “France is still seeking to talk with its partners on the Security Council,” including “Russia in particular.”
“These crimes must not remain unpunished,” he said, adding, “One day, international justice will rule on Assad.”