Geneva (AFP) - UN-mandated human rights investigators said Wednesday they believed the Syrian government dropped the chemical agent chlorine on civilian areas on eight different occasions in April.

"Reasonable grounds exist to believe that chemical agents, likely chlorine, were used on (northern Syrian villages) Kafr Zeita, al-Tamana and Tal Minnis in eight incidents within a 10-day period in April," the independent Commission of Inquiry on the rights situation in Syria said in a report.