The UN has found the Assad regime responsible for three more chemical attacks in Syria this year.
UN investigators said on Wednesday that the attacks had taken place on East Ghouta near Damascus, as pro-Assad forces pursued an offensive to reoccupy the area, and on Idlib Province in northwest Syria.
The UN has now attributed responsibility to the Assad regime for 33 chemical attacks since the regime’s August 2013 sarin assault on East and West Ghouta, killing more than 1,400 people. The Islamic State has been blamed for six others.
The UN team formally found the regime attacked Douma in East Ghouta on January 22 and February 1:
To recapture eastern Ghouta in April, government forces launched numerous indiscriminate attacks in densely populated civilian areas, which included the use of chemical weapons….
The Commission concludes that, on these two occasions, government forces and or affiliated militias committed the war crimes of using prohibited weapons and launching indiscriminate attacks in civilian-populated areas in eastern Ghouta.
The investigators said the chlorine was delivered by a surface-to-surface, improvised munition “built around industrially-produced Iranian artillery rockets known to have been supplied to forces commanded by the government”.
On April 7, regime helicopters carried out a double chlorine attack on Douma, killing about 50 people and wounding hundreds. The next day, rebels surrendered in the last town still held by the opposition in East Ghouta.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, initially hindered by the Assad regime and Russia from investigating the attacks, is still completing a formal report.
The Idlib chlorine attack cited by the UN team was on the town of Saraqeb on February 4:
Government helicopters dropped at least two barrels carrying chlorine payloads….Documentary and material evidence analyzed by the Commission confirmed the presence of helicopters in the area and the use of two yellow gas cylinders.
“The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, initially hindered by the Assad regime and Russia from investigating the attacks, is still completing a formal report.”
Scott Ritter points out that this is factually false.
“However, the OPCW report clearly shows that both the Syrian and Russian governments fully cooperated with the OPCW to provide secure access to Douma, and that any delays that occurred were due to legitimate security issues impacting inspector safety.
Now it looks like the reason the Americans and others accused Russia and Syria of delaying the work of the OPCW inspectors is that they suspected—no matter how much argued to the contrary—conclusive evidence wasn’t there to justify the April 12 military strikes. The United States laid out a military campaign predicated in large part by the notion that Syria continued to possess stocks of deadly sarin nerve agent and was using them against its own people. If one accepted at face value that sarin nerve agent was, in fact, used against Douma, then it automatically followed that there could be sarin-affiliated targets inside Syria worthy of attack.”
Scott Ritter is not a reliable source on this matter, given his animus towards the US (with much justification) since the Iraq War and — more importantly — given his lack of any information for his assertions.
Whether he has any animus towards the US is no more relevant than if his bias leaned in the other direction. His assertion is based on a timeline of claims made by the state department and what is contained in the OPCW interim report, which is open source.
His assertion is speculation and distortion, rather than a careful reading of OPCW interim report. I’ve seen it echo in other commentators starting from premise of a US conspiracy to set up attack on Assad regime, as well as absolving regime of any responsibility.
How can it be speculation or distortion when the OPCW issued public statements at the time that the inspections of Douma were delayed due to security arrangements? These statements were issued before the OPCW even arrived in Douma.