As many as 1,400 killed in a suspected chemical attack in Syria (updated)

“This is the ideal moment to collect samples because it is so shortly after the attack. They may get intact agent — in the first day or so you would still find intact sarin, for example. Within a few days you would find degradation products. If you link those to clinical examinations and testimony, you can build up a very precise picture of what happened.

“They need to try to get to the site where it happened, talk to people who were on the spot when it happened, to victims and observers, to create as complete a picture of the actual attack. They want to discriminate against other types of weapons that might cause similar effects or release something by chance.”

Charles Duelfer, a former U.S. chief weapons inspector, told the Guardian: “[Video] reports of doctors treating these people, that’s real data.” Duelfer said the scale of the attack could probably be proved by the intelligence community. “It will be pretty clear pretty quickly because various countries’ intelligence apparatus will have noticed something on this scale, whether it’s artillery, rockets, or shells. These are knowable things.

“The White House is going to be hard pressed to construct an answer to this one. It was easy to waffle a bit so long as alleged use was minor and didn’t happen again, but this is really putting the administration in a corner.”

Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, yesterday offered the first official Israeli reaction to the reports about the use of chemical weapons in Syria earlier in the day.

Ya’alon said: “The civil war in Syria is continuing, and there are about a 100,000 dead. The regime has also used chemical weapons, and not for the first time.”

Talking with reports, Ya’alon added: “This is a life-and-death struggle between a regime which represents the Alawite community and a fragmented opposition. We don’t see the end [of the struggle], and even the fall of Assad will not bring this conflict to an end.”

Last week, in a meeting with the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, who was on a visit to Israel, Ya’alon said that “We should be prepared for a long-term civil war in Syria.” Ya’alon told Ban that Israel’s intelligence and security analysts have concluded that the conflict in Syria has become a global conflict, with one side supported by Russia and the other side backed by the United States.

“On the one hand, the regime cannot defeat the opposition, and, on the other hand, the opposition cannot defeat the regime,” Ya’aalon added. “The bloody toll continues to grow, and this conflict, for a long time now, is no longer a local Syrian conflict, but a fault-line between Sunnis and Shi’as.”

Chemical weapons experts who examined the more than 120 videos posted to social networks say that based on these videos, it appears that the dead and wounded were targeted by chemical weapons. The indications are:

• None of the dozens and dozens of victims in the videos and pictures shows any external injuries typically associated with conventional blasts — injured limbs, bloody faces and torsos, torn cloths
• Many of the victims not already dead show the type of twitching and involuntary muscle movements associated with slow and painful suffocation, which is a symptom of chemical weapon use
• Close-up of some of the victims show dilated pupils
• Moreover, if it was a chemical attack, then launching it around 2:00-3:00 a.m. shows that whoever launched the attack was familiar with operating chemical weapons. Using chemical weapons during the day reduces their lethality, as the day’s heat breaks down the chemicals more quickly, and the wind disperses them. In the very early hours of the day, the cold air allows the chemicals to remain potent longer, and the early morning moisture keeps the chemicals at ground level, where they can kill more people.

There are, however, question marks as well:

• The timing of the attack would be awkward, as a UN inspection team is in Syria now, inspecting charges that the Syrian regimes used chemical weapons in a 19 March attack
• With the increasing aid from Iran and Russia, and thousands of fighters from Hezbollah, the Assad regime has been able to turn the tide and win battles in several strategic locations. It would make no sense for the Assad regime to risk using chemical weapons when it was successful in turning back rebel gains by conventional means
• On the videos, the medical and emergency personnel treating the injured and removing the dead bodies are not wearing any protective gear. Experts notes that military-grade chemical weapons use chemicals in high concentrations, and as a result these chemicals do not evaporate right away. This means that the injured and the dead, and their cloths, would be so contaminated with poison gas that the emergency and medical staff themselves would become victims.

Gavin Williams, an analyst who writes for CBRNe World, says that “One possibility is that [regime forces] have used chemicals for crowd dispersal, but in high concentrations which caused death among people crowded in a bunker or a shelter.”

He noted that the typical use of such crowd dispersal chemicals is in low concentrations and low quantities, such as in a chemical-filled hand grenade.

Haaretz notes that at times the military would use dispersal chemicals in much larger quantities, using artillery shells or even chemical-filled barrels dropped from planes. The U.S. military used chemical-filled barrels dropped from planes in the Vietnam War, in an effort to force Viet Kong fighters out of bunkers and tunnels where they were hiding.

Such a barrel, or an artillery shell, may cause death if a bunker crowded with people is directly hit.

Experts note that another possibility is a heavy conventional aerial bombardment using a thermobaric weapon – also called fuel-air bomb. Thermobaric explosives rely on oxygen from the surrounding air, unlike most conventional explosives which consist of a fuel-oxidizer premix.

The effect of a fuel-air explosion within confined spaces is dramatic. Those near the ignition point are obliterated, while those at the fringe would likely suffer internal, and thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness.

The Syrian army has been using fuel-air bombs extensively in bombing residential areas of Sunni towns and villages.