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Amateur videos posted online Wednesday showed men and children sprawled out on hospital beds and on tile floors. The Syrian government ...
Scores Killed in Syria, With Signs of Chemical War
Bassam Khabieh/Reuters
Aftermath of Attack in Syria:
Hundreds of Syrians have reportedly been killed by what rebels call a
chemical weapons attack carried out by the government. Above, a man held
a child, among the dead.
By BEN HUBBARD and HWAIDA SAAD
Published: August 21, 2013 297 Comments
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Scores of men, women and children were killed outside
Damascus on Wednesday in an attack marked by the telltale signs of
chemical weapons: row after row of corpses without visible injury;
hospitals flooded with victims, gasping for breath, trembling and
staring ahead languidly; images of a gray cloud bursting over a neighborhood.
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Bassam Khabieh/Reuters
Survivors from what activists say was a chemical
weapons attack at a mosque on Wednesday in the Duma neighborhood of
Damascus.
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But even with videos,
witness accounts and testimonies by emergency medics, it was impossible
to say for certain how many people had been killed and what exactly had
killed them. The rebels blamed the government, the government denied
involvement and Russia accused the rebels of staging the attack to
implicate President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Images of death and chaos poured out of Syria after what may be the
single deadliest attack in more than two years of civil war. Videos
posted online showed dozens of lifeless bodies, men wrapped in burial
shrouds and children, some still in diapers. There were hospital scenes
of corpses and the stricken sprawled on gurneys and tile floors as
medics struggled to resuscitate them.
Getting to the bottom of the assault could well alter the course of the
conflict and affect the level of the West’s involvement.
President Obama said almost exactly a year ago that the use of chemical weapons was a red line.
But the subsequent conclusion by the White House that the Syrian Army
had used chemical weapons did not bring about a marked shift in American
engagement.
This latest attack, by far the largest chemical strike yet alleged,
could tip that balance — as many foes of Mr. Assad hope it will.
But like so much in Syria, where the government bars most reporters from
working and the opposition heavily filters the information it lets out,
the truth remains elusive.
The attack was especially conspicuous given the presence in Damascus of a team
sent by the United Nations to investigate chemical strikes reportedly
waged earlier in the war. The United States, the European Union and
other world powers called for the investigators to visit the site of
Wednesday’s attack.
The Security Council, meeting in emergency session, issued a statement
calling for a prompt investigation of the allegations and a cease-fire
in the conflict, but took no further action.
“I can say that there is a strong concern among Council members about
the allegations and a general sense that there must be clarity on what
happened, and that the situation has to be followed carefully,” said
María Cristina Perceval of Argentina, the president of the Council,
after the meeting. “All Council members agreed that any use of chemical
weapons, by any side under any circumstances, is a violation of
international law.”
The ranking diplomat from Britain, Philip Parham, told reporters later
outside the Security Council chambers that representatives of at least
35 countries had signed a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
requesting that Syrian authorities grant the United Nations
investigative panel in Syria “urgent access” to the attack site.
But Mr. Parham declined to specify the signatories or to divulge whether
any of the 15 Security Council members had proposed any stronger
measures during their closed-door consultations.
In the opposition’s account of the deadly events, Mr. Assad’s forces
deployed poison gas on a number of rebel-held suburbs east of Damascus,
the capital. They described medics finding people dead in their homes.
Videos posted online showed mostly men and children, but the opposition
activists said that many women were killed too, but that out of respect
they were not photographed.
The actual death toll remained unclear. The Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights said late Wednesday that more than 130 people had been confirmed
dead in attacks around Damascus, though it could not confirm the use of
gas. Other opposition estimates put the death toll at more than 1,000.
“I saw many children lying on beds as if they were sleeping, but
unfortunately they were dead,” said an activist reached via Skype in the
suburb of Erbin, who gave his name as Abu Yassin.
“We thought this regime would not use chemical weapons, at least these
days with the presence of the U.N. inspectors,” he said. “It is
reckless. The regime is saying, ‘I don’t care.’ ”
Others said that field hospitals were overwhelmed with the number of
patients and that many ran out of medication. An activist who gave only
his first name, Mohammed, said the dead in one suburb, Zamalka, were
laid out in front of a mosque, where a voice over loudspeakers called on
residents to identify their relatives.
The video record posted online did not provide enough detail to draw a
complete picture of what happened. Unlike the videos often uploaded by
the opposition, the images on Wednesday did not show the immediate
aftermath of the attacks in the communities.
The videos, experts said, also did not prove the use of chemical
weapons, which interfere with the nervous system and can cause
defecation, vomiting, intense salivation and tremors. Only some of those
symptoms were visible in some patients.
Gwyn Winfield, editor of CBRNe World, a
journal that covers unconventional weapons, said that the medics would
most likely have been sickened by exposure to so many people dosed with
chemical weapons — a phenomenon not seen in the videos. He said that the
victims could have been killed by tear gas used in a confined space, or
by a diluted form of a more powerful chemical agent. Others suggested
that toxic industrial chemicals might have been used.
Some witness testimony suggested that residents, used to seeking cover
from government shelling and airstrikes by running into underground
shelters, had made the situation worse. In one video, a young medic said
that residents had hidden in their basements, where the gas collected
and suffocated them.
“The descent of the citizens into the basements increased the number of
wounded and the number of martyrs,” the medic said, before breaking into
tears and adding that many from the medical corps also succumbed to the
gases.
It was not clear whether the team sent to Syria by the United Nations
would be able to investigate the new reported attacks. The team arrived
Sunday after months of negotiations with the Syrian government and is
authorized to visit only three predetermined sites.
The White House said that Syria should provide access to the United
Nations, and that those found to have used chemical weapons should be
held accountable. Other countries, including Britain and France, offered
similar expressions of concern.
Russia wrote off the attack as a “preplanned provocation” orchestrated
by the rebels and said they had launched the gas with a homemade rocket
from an area they controlled.
“All of this looks like an attempt at all costs to create a pretext for
demanding that the U.N. Security Council side with opponents of the
regime and undermine the chances of convening the Geneva conference,”
said the statement, issued by Aleksandr Lukashevich, a spokesman for the
Foreign Ministry. He also called for a “professional and fair
investigation.”
At least one photograph
posted on Facebook by an activist showed what looked like a makeshift
rocket. But loyalist militias and Hezbollah have both fired makeshift
rockets at rebel positions in this war, and could presumably be suspects
for any attacks with improvised rockets on rebel-controlled
neighborhoods.
The Syrian Army, in a statement read on state television, denied having
used chemical weapons, calling the accusations part of a “filthy media
war” in favor of the rebels. The claims “are nothing but a desperate
effort to cover their defeat on the ground, and reflect the state of
hysteria, confusion and collapse of these gangs and those who support
them,” the statement said.
Louay Mekdad, a media coordinator for the military wing of the
opposition Syrian National Council, said the attack showed that Mr.
Assad “doesn’t care any longer about red lines since he has already
exceeded too many of them while the world has showed no reaction.”
Mr. Mekdad called on the Security Council and international powers to
“live up to their moral and historic responsibility” to protect
civilians in Syria. “If the international community doesn’t move now,
when is it going to move?” he asked.
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