At Least 40 Killed in Chemical Attack Near Syrian Capital

At least 48 people died Saturday in Douma, the last rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta, the White Helmets rescue group and the Syrian American Medical Society charity group said in a joint statement.

US President Donald Trump accused Russian Federation and Iran over the alleged attacks: “Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad”. Simply because the potential consequences attached to Syrian military forces carrying out such an attack at any point in the conflict, but especially this point, would be so catastrophic.

“Previous Security Council resolutions on the issue have not succeeded in stopping the use of chemical weapons in Syria”.

As U.S. officials consider whether and how to respond, they are looking at what type of chemical agent might have been used.

Basel Termanini, the US-based vice president of SAMS, told Reuters another 35 people, majority women and children, had been killed at a nearby apartment building.

The tests found “markers” in samples taken at Ghouta and at the sites of two other nerve agent attacks, in Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017 and Khan al-Assal in March 2013, two people involved in the process say.

More than 100 buses entered the town Sunday night to transport fighters and their families to Jarablus, a town under the shared control of rebels and Turkey, said Syrian state-affiliated al-Ikhbariya TV.

The war in Syria is in the news following a suspected chemical weapons attack, in which at least 70 people have died.

Anti-government activists claimed Syrian military helicopters dropped barrel bombs filled with chemicals on the town, suffocating some residents and sending others into violent convulsions.

The Syrian government denied its forces had launched any chemical assault and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said such allegations were false and a provocation.

The alleged chemical attack by Syrian forces in Idlib in 2017, which led to Trump’s decision to launch a cruise missile strike against the government’s Shayrat Airbase in Homs, came just after Trump had announced that regime change in Damascus was now off the table as a United States strategic objective.

A representative for the United Nations said that Secretary General António Guterres was “particularly alarmed by allegations that chemical weapons have been used against civilian populations in Douma” but that the United Nations was “not in a position to verify these reports”.

Commenting on the incidents, the European Union called for an worldwide response to the attack.

Missiles struck an air base in central Syria early today, its state-run news agency reported.

Heather Nauert, the spokeswoman for the State Department, told the media that the world community should immediately act if the attack is confirmed. When asked if the U.S. would respond in a similar way to this latest alleged chemical attack, White House adviser Tom Bossert told ABC television: “I wouldn’t take anything off the table”.

The Russian denial came hours after a deadly attack on a Syrian military airport, which Moscow and the Syrian Government blamed on Israel.

He criticised Russian Federation for failing to ensure Syria abandoned chemical weapons, having pledged to do so after a sarin nerve agent attack killed an estimated 1,300 people in 2013.

Amid the tough talk from the White House, the USA military appeared to be in position to carry out any attack order.

“The children of Syria have witnessed and experienced unimaginable suffering over the past seven years”.