This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/world/middleeast/syria.html

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Suspected Chlorine Attacks in Syria to Be Investigated Pro-Assad Areas Are Attacked in Syria, Pointing to Election Trouble
(about 3 hours later)
GENEVA — A group that monitors compliance with the treaty banning chemical weapons said on Tuesday that it was sending a mission to Syria to “establish the facts” surrounding allegations that antagonists in the civil war have used chlorine gas bombs. BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than 50 people were killed in bomb, mortar and rocket attacks in government-controlled areas of Syria on Tuesday, as the international chemical weapons monitoring group declared that it was sending inspectors to the country to investigate suspected use of chlorine gas.
Ahmet Uzumcu, the head of the group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, announced the mission at a meeting of its executive council, according to a statement released from its headquarters in The Hague. The wave of attacks on civilian, mainly pro-government, areas in the capital, Damascus, and in the central city of Homs, came a day after President Bashar al-Assad formally announced plans to run for re-election. Taken together, the day’s events underscored the uncertainties around the elections planned for June 3, which government opponents widely regard as a sham, saying Mr. Assad’s victory is guaranteed.
Syria had “agreed to accept this mission” and would provide security in areas under government control, the statement said, adding that the mission had the full support of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. It remains unclear how the vote can be carried out safely amid the war, while insurgents still strike in the heart of government territory and the government bombards insurgent-held areas in major cities like Aleppo on a daily basis.
A European diplomat who attended the meeting said in a telephone interview that Mr. Uzumcu had expressed hope the mission would leave for Syria later this week. The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed to the press, said all delegates welcomed the plans. While the government has aimed to gain a new measure of international credibility by pledging elimination of its chemical weapons program, it now faces new questions not only about the suspected chlorine attacks, but about its repeatedly missed deadlines — most recently on Sunday — to remove the declared toxic arsenal from the country.
Members of the United Nations Security Council called for an investigation into the attacks last week after a briefing from Sigrid Kaag, the head of the joint effort by the United Nations and the chemical weapons watchdog to oversee the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons program. Also on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch issued a report documenting what it said were at least 85 barrel bomb attacks by the government in Aleppo since Feb. 22, when the United Nations Security Council passed a unanimous resolution calling on all parties to stop the use of barrel bombs and other indiscriminate weapons on civilian areas. Two of the attacks, the report said, hit clearly marked government hospitals.
The United States and France have said they are taking seriously allegations that Syrian government forces dropped bombs filled with chlorine in an attack earlier this month on the village of Kafr Zita in central Hama province. The report came a day before a planned Security Council meeting to discuss compliance with the resolution, which also called for unimpeded humanitarian aid access, a request that rights groups say has been basically ignored.
The Syrian government has denied responsibility and has accused the Nusra Front, a jihadi insurgent group, of carrying out the attack. Officials with the group that monitors compliance with the treaty banning chemical arms, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said in a statement after a closed meeting at its headquarters in The Hague that the Syrian government had agreed to accept a mission investigating suspected chlorine attacks and would provide security for such a mission.
Chlorine is a common industrial chemical that is not on the list of items prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention, the treaty that Syria signed last year as part of its promise to renounce chemical weapons. But the treaty bans the use of any chemicals as military weapons. Ahmet Uzumcu, the director general of the group, said he hoped the mission would start next week, according to a European diplomat who attended the meeting. The session was also punctuated by complaints about delays in eliminating Syria’s toxic arms under an agreement that averted American airstrikes on Syria after sarin gas attacks last August near Damascus. All the arms are scheduled to be destroyed outside the country by June 30, but 7.5 percent remain in Syria.
The monitor group’s meeting on Tuesday also was punctuated by sharp criticism from Western governments over what they regard as Syrian government stalling over the export of the remainder of its chemical weapons cache. “I think all of us expected to be at a very different stage of the effort than we are today,” Robert P. Mikulak, the American ambassador to the monitoring group, said in remarks posted on the State Department’s website, adding that the Syrian government had “delayed the operation at every opportunity.”
Syria has missed successive deadlines for completing the process, the latest of them on Sunday, when international experts overseeing the program said roughly 7.5 percent of the stockpile, or about 100 tons, remained at one site. The government has denied carrying out the suspected chlorine attacks in the village of Kfar Zeita in central Hama Province, blaming them on the Qaeda-linked insurgent group the Nusra Front. Government opponents say recent suspected chlorine gas attacks there and in other insurgent-held areas were carried out by helicopters, which only the government possesses.
Robert P. Mikulak, the American ambassador to the monitor group, was especially critical of the missed deadlines, according to his statement to the meeting, which was posted on the State Department’s website They charge that Mr. Assad’s forces are defiantly carrying out new chemical attacks using arms not listed in Syria’s declaration of its stockpiles last year, allegations that the United States and France have said they are taking seriously.
“I think all of us expected to be at a very different stage of the effort than we are today,” he said. The government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, he said, had “delayed the operation at every opportunity.” Chlorine is a common industrial chemical not banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention that Syria signed last year. But the treaty bans using any chemicals as weapons.
No destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons can begin until Syria delivers the last consignments of chemicals to Norwegian and Danish vessels now waiting in the Mediterranean to take delivery. On Tuesday morning, mortar shells struck the Shaghour neighborhood in Damascus, killing at least 14 people and wounding 86, according to state news media. The attack, one of the deadliest mortar strikes in central Damascus, hit a school of Islamic jurisprudence where some students are children.
Under a Security Council resolution passed last September, the entire arsenal must be destroyed by June 30. Hours later, a car bomb hit a largely pro-government neighborhood in Homs, killing at least 40 people, according to state news media and residents. Another explosion, either from a rocket or a second car bomb, according to conflicting reports, later struck the same area, hitting those who had gathered to help.
No group immediately took responsibility, but some antigovernment activists attributed the attack to the Nusra Front, which has claimed similar bombings.
Mustafa Aboud, a neighborhood official who recently survived a car bomb just yards from his office in the adjacent Zahra neighborhood of Homs, said in a telephone interview that the area hit was a busy civilian neighborhood. “There’s kindergartens, primary and intermediate schools, no military headquarters,” he said.
Photographs from the scene showed blackened bodies. In Talbiseh, one of the few remaining insurgent-held areas in Homs Province, Hassan Abu Noa, an antigovernment fighter, declared himself “really happy” and called members of the Nusra Front “heroes” for killing people in a pro-government area.
“Let them grieve and feel the same sadness that we feel,” he said via Internet chat. “Don’t think that I am an angry animal. I am just someone who lost everything because of Bashar.”