“There are reasonable grounds to believe” that at least one Syrian Air Force helicopter dropped two barrels of poison gas on the city of Douma during the civil war. A report by investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Friday (January 27th) accused the Syrian government of carrying out a chlorine attack, in which 43 people died in 2018. “The world now knows the facts – it is up to the international community to act, at the OPCW and beyond”said, in a press release (link in English)the general manager of the organization, Fernando Arias.
Damascus and its ally Moscow said the April 7, 2018 attack was staged by rescue workers at the request of the United States, which launched airstrikes on Syria days later with the United Kingdom. United and France. The case had also sparked controversy after reports leaked that two former employees of the OPCW, based in The Hague (Netherlands), had questioned the findings of an earlier investigation. But the OPCW said its investigators had “considered a series of possible scenarios” and concluded that “Syrian Arab Air Force [étaient] the perpetrators of this attack”.
Western powers have jointly called for Syria to be held accountable for this “horrible” offensive. “We call on the Russian Federation to stop protecting Syria [des conséquences] of its responsibility in the use of chemical weapons”the US, UK, French and German foreign ministers said in a joint statement. “All the disinformation in the world will not be able to conceal the role the Kremlin has played in encouraging the regime of [Bachar al-]Assad.”