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Gas Attack Is Said to Kill Dozens in Syria

The body of a child after a reported gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria, on Tuesday.

Victims of the suspected gas attack on Tuesday.

Victims receiving treatment at a makeshift hospital.
APRIL 4, 2017
BEIRUT, Lebanon — A toxic gas attack killed dozens of people in northern Syria on Tuesday morning, including women and children, and sickened scores more, according to medics, rescuers and witnesses in the rebel-held province of Idlib, who said the gas had been delivered by a government airstrike.
A few hours later, according to several witnesses, another airstrike hit one of the clinics treating victims, who had been farmed out to smaller hospitals and maternity wards because the area’s largest hospital had been severely damaged by an airstrike two days earlier.
The European Union and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey condemned the attack and blamed the Syrian government. France called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
Numerous photographs and videos posted online by activists and residents showed children and older adults gasping and struggling to breathe, or lying motionless in the mud as rescue workers ripped off victims’ clothes and hosed them down. The bodies of least 10 children lay lined up on the ground or under a quilt.
While chlorine attacks have become almost routine in northern Syria, this one was different, medical workers and witnesses said. Chlorine attacks usually kill just a few people, often those trapped in an enclosed space, and the gas dissipates quickly.
This time, people collapsed outdoors, in much larger numbers. The symptoms were also different: They included the pinpoint pupils of victims that characterize nerve agents and other banned toxins. One doctor posted a video of a patient’s eye, showing the pupil reduced to a dot. Several people were sickened simply by coming into contact with the victims.
The attack appeared to be the largest and most toxic chemical attack in Syria since August 2013, when more than 1,000 people were killed in the Damascus suburbs by the banned toxin sarin. Under threat of United States retaliation, the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/bashar_al_assad/index.html ], agreed to a Russian-American deal to eliminate his country’s chemical weapons program, which until that time it had denied having, and to join an international treaty banning chemical weapons.
But the international monitoring body, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, has found that the Syrian government used chlorine gas as a weapon in 2014 and 2015, violating the treaty. Rebel fighters, doctors and antigovernment activists say there have been numerous other chlorine attacks, including at least two in the past week, in one case killing a doctor as he worked.
The government denies that it has used chemical weapons, arguing that insurgents and Islamic State fighters use toxins to frame the government or that the attacks are staged.
A pro-government journalist, Hussein Mortada, posted on his Facebook account that, according to a military source, the Syrian Army had bombed a Qaeda facility containing chemical weapons, causing the deaths. He mocked the victims and suggested that opposition groups had poisoned their own children, saying that the images of rows of youngsters being laid out in shrouds were coming to resemble “a Turkish soap opera.”
A chemical weapons attack, if carried out by the government, would be a brazen statement of impunity, coming during a major international meeting in Brussels that is debating whether the European Union and others will contribute billions of dollars for reconstructing Syria if it is presided over by a government run by Mr. Assad.
Fadi Halisso, a Syrian former priest who runs Basmeh and Zeitooneh, a humanitarian organization that aids Syrian and Palestinian [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/palestinians/index.html ] refugees said the attack was a direct insult to the European Union. “Assad is telling them you will pay and I will continue killing,” he added from Brussels, where he was attending the meeting. “You can do nothing.”
There had already been debate about whether Europe and the West would be willing or able to insist on a significant political transition, or at least power sharing, as a condition for supplying reconstruction funds.
Last Friday, Trump administration officials made official the direction that American policy has been tilting since President Barack Obama’s later years in office: Ousting Assad is no longer a priority, and Washington’s main goal is to fight the Islamic State.
[...]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/world/middleeast/syria-gas-attack.html


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Syria gas attack: Number of dead in Khan Shaykhun rises to 58, according to activist group
April 4, 2017
At least 58 are dead after a suspected chemical attack in the northern Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun, the Associated Press [ http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_SYRIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-04-04-06-52-45 ] reports. Local activists described the attack as the worst since the 2013 toxic gas attack in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, which killed hundreds. 
The number of dead comes from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights [ http://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=64063 ], which also said that 11 of the 58 dead were children. Activists believe the airstrike was carried out either by the Syrian government or Russian warplanes, according to the AP,
The White Helmets, a volunteer civil defense organization, posted pictures [

Civilian areas in Khan Shaykhun were targeted with poisonous gases this morning. Initial rprts of 50 killed incl wmn & chldrn, 300+ injured. pic.twitter.com/ZQ6MAgsqNO

— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) April 4, 2017

] to their Twitter account of people being rushed to hospitals for treatment after the attack. 
[...]
https://mic.com/articles/173031/syria-gas-attack-number-of-dead-in-khan-shaykhun-rises-to-58-according-to-activist-group


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McCain rips Trump administration over Syria policy
McCain said the commander in chief needs to speak out against Assad
"It is another disgraceful chapter in American history," Sen. John McCain said
Updated April 4, 2017
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/04/politics/john-mccain-syria-trump-cnntv/ [with embedded video]


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Israel's history of protecting al-Assad
April 4, 2017
http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2017/04/04/israels-history-of-protecting-al-assad.html [with comments]


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