Chemical attack in April killed 83

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s air force conducted a sarin-gas attack that killed at least 83 civilians in April, one of 20 chemical weapons attacks perpetrated by the Syrian government in the past four years, U.N.-mandated investigators said Wednesday.

The investigators also appealed to the U.S.-led coalition to better protect civilians as it strikes at Islamic State militants in the east.

The latest report by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria offers among the strongest evidence yet of allegations that Assad’s forces carried out the April 4 attack on Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib province in which dozens of people were killed. The United States quickly blamed the Syrian government and launched a punitive strike on Shayrat air base, where the report says the Sukhoi-22 plane took off.

Syria in denial

Syrian government officials have denied responsibility, and said last month that they would allow in U.N. teams to investigate. Russia says the United States and its Western allies rushed to judgment and blamed the Syrian government without ever visiting the site.

“We have analysed all the other interpretations” of who might have conducted the attack, commission chairman Paulo Pinheiro said at a Geneva news conference. “It is our task to verify these allegations, and we concluded ... that this attack was perpetrated by the Syrian air force.”

Wednesday’s report, the 14th by the commission since it was set up by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council in 2011, covers little more than four months, from March to early July. The report is based on information retrieved from satellite images, video, photos, medical records, and over 300 interviews.