France said on Tuesday it had performed tests that proved President Bashar al-Assad's forces had used nerve gas in Syria's civil war, a "red line" that the United States and other countries have repeatedly said would demand a response.

Washington separately said it would deploy Patriot missiles and F-16 fighter jets to Syria's neighbor Jordan for a military exercise and perhaps longer. Russia, Assad's main international backer, criticized the move and accused the West of inflaming the conflict by sending arms to the war zone.

French officials said their tests were the first that complied with international standards and proved that chemical weapons were used in Syria.

Washington, which has said for months it believes Assad's forces probably used chemical weapons, said it still needed to study the evidence. "We need more information" about claims of such use, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

Speaking on France 2 television, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Paris had tested samples collected in Syria, and that some proved that the Syrian government had used sarin, the deadly nerve agent Saddam Hussein used in Iraq.

In one case it was not possible to prove who was responsible, but "in the second case there is no doubt that it was the regime and its accomplices, because we are aware of the entire chain from when the attack took place, to when the people were killed and when the samples were taken," he said.

The results were handed to the head of a U.N. chemical weapons investigation team on Tuesday in Paris, Fabius said.

A French diplomatic source said samples included blood and urine from victims, taken after a government helicopter bombed Saraqib near the northern city of Idlib on April 29.

The mounting evidence of the use of poison gas poses a dilemma for Western countries including the United States, which have promised to act if such weapons are used but have no obvious path for a military intervention.

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