SyriaReports: hundreds killed in chemical weapons attack east of Damascus
Syrian rebels say at least 750 people were killed in attacks on villages in rebel-held areas in the Ghouta region east of Damascus. News agencies quote medical personnel who confirmed that hundreds of victims treated in hospitals and make-shift first-aid stations were suffering from symptoms associated with chemical weapons attack. Syrian government officials deny that regime forces used chemical weapons. The Arab League called for immediate investigation, and the U.K. said it would bring the reports to the UN Security Council today.
Syrian rebels said an a chemical attack by the Syrian army has killed more than 750 today (Wednesday) in a district east of the capital Damascus, a claim Syrian officials strongly deny.
The officials say the claim is a sign of “hysteria and floundering” by President Bashar Assad’s opponents.
The denial was issued by Information Minister Omran Zoabi on state television. He said the allegations were “illogical and fabricated.”
Haaretz reports that the rebels claimed that rockets carrying chemical agents hit the suburbs of Ain Tarma, Zamalka and Jobar in the Ghouta region. News sources reported that, in addition, at least ten different villages were hit.
The Guardian quotes Bayan Baker, a nurse at Douma Emergency Collection facility, to say that the death toll from the attack, based on information she received from several medical centers in the region, was 213.
Many of the casualties are women and children. They arrived with their pupil dilated, cold limbs and foam in their mouths. The doctors say these are typical symptoms of nerve gas victims,” Baker said.
Haaretz quotes AP and Reuters reports, based on numbers from the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, which said 755 people were killed.
A member of the coordinating committee earlier told al-Arabiya TV that 635 people had been killed.
Khaled Omar of the opposition local council in Ain Tarma said he saw at least eighty bodies at the Hajjah Hospital in Ain Tarma and at a makeshift clinic at Tatbiqiya School in the nearby district of Saqba.
“The attack took place at around 3:00 A.M. Most of those killed were in their homes,” Omar said.
The Guardian reports that dozens of graphic videos added to social media Web sites show ad-hoc first aid rooms appearing to deal with multiple casualties of a chemical or toxic attack. The patients, many of them children sprawled on tiled floors and piled on hospital beds, have been stripped down seemingly in an effort to free them of the toxic substances on their clothes.
The injured or dead do not appear to have any visible injures. Many seem lifeless; others are struggling to breathe.
Some footage shows people wearing oxygen masks and others show scenes of people’s hearts and chests being massaged or being hosed and washed. In a few cases, people including children are filmed foaming at the mouth while those attending give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The Guardian notes that the Ghouta region has been the focus of intense fighting between government and Hezbollah soldiers and rebel forces. Both sides are anxious to secure the outskirts of Damascus near the border with Lebanon to the country’s north, where Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist groups are concentrated.
The head of the UN chemical weapons inspectors in Syria, Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom, said the reports must be investigated.
Sellstrom, interviewed by news agency TT, said that while he had only seen TV footage, the high number of casualties reported sounded suspicious. “It sounds like something that should be looked into,” he told TT by phone from Damascus. “It will depend on whether any UN member state goes to the secretary general and says we should look at this event. We are in place.”
The Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby said that the UN chemical inspectors, already in Syria to investigate suspected chemical use by the regime on 19 March, should immediately investigate reports.
“The secretary general said in a statement he was surprised this deplorable crime would happen during the visit of a team of international investigators with the United Nations who are already tasked with investigating chemical weapons use,” the official news agency MENA said.” He called on the inspectors to head immediately to the eastern Ghouta (suburb of Damascus) “to determine what happened.”
Britain earlier today said it would raise the reports at the UN Security Council and called on Damascus to give UN inspectors access to the site.
“I am deeply concerned by reports that hundreds of people, including children, have been killed in airstrikes and a chemical weapons attack on rebel-held areas near Damascus,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement.
