THE Syrian father of nine-month-old twins who were killed in the gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun says he is stunned at how President Bashar al-Assad could question the legitimacy of children’s deaths.

Abdul Hamid Alyousef’s wife and twins were among 80 people killed in the devastating attack. There were 22 victims from Alyousef’s immediate family alone.

In his first interview since the attack, the Syrian President denied launching the chemical attack and claimed it was a fabrication by the US.

“How can he pretend that they are not dead? How? We saw them. We buried them with our own hands,” Alyousef told the Mail Online, speaking of Assad through his cousin, Aya Fadl.

The father also begged world leaders not to fall into “the lies of his criminal regime”, according to the Mail.

“For Assad we all are terrorists, so we expect that he will lie again and again. To him those women, those children are all terrorist.”

Footage from the aftermath of the attack showed Alyousef stroking his twins’ hair and choking back tears before mumbling “Say goodbye, baby, say goodbye” to their lifeless bodies.

media_camera Abdul-Hamid Alyousef holds his twin babies who were killed during a chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun town, in the northern province of Idlib, Syria. Picture: AP

‘WERE THOSE KIDS DEAD AT ALL?’

Assad has called claims that his government launched a chemical attack on his own people are “100 per cent fabrication”.

The Syrian President said he believed that the US was working “hand in glove with the terrorists” and maintains that Syria gave up all its chemical weapons in 2013.

“There was no order to make any attack ... We gave up our arsenal a few years ago. Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them,” he said. “Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack.”

The suspected attack killed at least 87 people, including many children, and images of the dead and of suffering victims provoked global outrage.

media_camera A Syrian child receives treatment at a small hospital in the town of Maaret al-Noman following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun. Picture: AFP

Assad insisted it was “not clear whether it happened or not, because how can you verify a video? You have a lot of fake videos now.”

“We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhun. Were they dead at all?”

He said Khan Sheikhun had no strategic value and was not currently a battle front.

“This story is not convincing by any means.”

He said a barrage of US missiles against a military airport had not diminished his government’s ability to carry out strikes.

“Our firepower, our ability to attack the terrorists hasn’t been affected by this strike,” he said.

media_camera The US has admitted it made a mistake with a misdirected air strike. Picture: AP

US ADMITS MISTAKE IN SYRIA AIR STRIKE

Meanwhile, the US has admitted that it killed 18 allied fighters in northern Syria in a misdirected air strike.

“The strike was requested by the partnered forces, who had identified the target location as an ISIS fighting position,” the Pentagon said in a statement, referring to the Islamic State militant group by an acronym. “The target location was actually a forward Syrian Democratic Forces fighting position.”

Assad said he would only allow an “impartial” external investigation of last week’s suspected chemical attack.

“We can only allow any investigation when it’s impartial, when we make sure that unbiased countries will participate in this delegation in order to make sure that they won’t use it for politicised purposes,” he said.

media_camera This satellite image shows destroyed aircraft shelters on the southeast side of the Shayrat air base in Syria, following US Tomahawk land attack missile strikes. Picture: AP

Assad said peace talks on resolving his country’s war were ineffective because Washington was “not serious” about ending the conflict.

“The United States is not serious in achieving any political solution. They want to use it as an umbrella for the terrorists,”

Global chemical weapons investigators have gone to Turkey to collect samples as part of an inquiry into the attack in Syria that killed 87 people on April 4.

The fact-finding mission was sent by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague to gather biometric samples and interview survivors, sources told Reuters.

Agony of a tiny boy Agony of a tiny boy

The toxic gas attack, which killed scores of people including children, prompted a US cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base and widened a rift between the US and Russia, a close ally of Assad’s in his conflict with rebels and militants.

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Syrian authorities have repeatedly denied using any chemical weapons. Russian officials said the gas had been released by an air strike on a poison gas storage depot controlled by rebels.

media_camera An unconscious Syrian child is carried at a hospital in Khan Sheikhun following the toxic gas attack on April 4. Picture: AFP

Washington said that account was not credible and rebels have denied it. Samples taken from the poison gas site in Syria’s Idlib governorate tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, the British delegation at the OPCW said on Thursday.

“UK scientists have analysed samples taken from Khan Sheikhoun. These have tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, or a sarin-like substance,” the delegation said during a special session at the OPCW in The Hague.

The UK result confirmed earlier testing by Turkish authorities that concluded sarin had been used for the first time on a large scale in Syria’s civil war since 2013.

The OPCW mission will determine whether chemical weapons were used, but is not mandated to assign blame.

media_camera The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea. Picture: AP

media_camera This satellite image shows destroyed aircraft shelters on the southeast side of the Shayrat air base in Syri. Picture: AP

Its findings, expected in three to four weeks, will be passed to a joint United Nations-OPCW chemical weapons investigation.

International investigators have concluded that sarin, chlorine and sulphur mustard gas have been used in Syria’s six-year-old conflict, with government forces using chlorine and Islamic State militants using sulphur mustard.

Originally published as ‘We buried them with our own hands’