Alleged chemical attack kills 25 in Aleppo

Updated

The Syrian regime and the rebels are blaming each other for an alleged chemical weapons attack which killed at least 25 people in a village near Aleppo.

The Syrian government accused rebels of using chemical weapons in a rocket attack in Khan al-Assal, saying rebels fired a rocket carrying chemical agents that killed 25 people and wounded dozens.

But rebel fighters said government forces were responsible for the attack, and the US said it had seen "no evidence" that the rebels were to blame.

"Fighting was raging in Khan al-Assal this morning and the regime's army hit the town with a long-range missile equipped with a chemical warhead. It also hit the area with conventional weapons from the air and with artillery," Louay al-Meqdad, the political coordinator for the rebel command, told the Reuters news agency.

A senior rebel commander, Qassim Saadeddine, who is also a spokesman for the Higher Military Council in Aleppo, added: "We believe they fired a Scud with chemical agents."

The rebels said injured people reported cases of suffocation and a strong smell of chlorine in the air after the missile hit the town.

A photographer for the Reuters news agency in the village echoed those claims.

He said victims in Aleppo hospitals were suffering breathing problems and that people had said they could smell chlorine after the attack.

"I saw mostly women and children," said the photographer, who cannot be named for his own safety.

He quoted victims at the University of Aleppo hospital and the al-Rajaa hospital as saying people were dying in the streets and in their houses.

'Falling dead to the floor'

Syrian state TV aired footage of what it said were casualties of the attack arriving at one hospital in Aleppo.

Men, women and children were rushed inside on stretchers as doctors inserted medical drips into their arms and oxygen tubes into their mouths. None had visible wounds to their bodies, but some interviewed said they had trouble breathing.

An unidentified doctor interviewed on the channel said the attack was either "phosphorus or poison" but did not elaborate.

A young girl on a stretcher wept as she said: "My chest closed up. I couldn't talk. I couldn't breathe ... We saw people falling dead to the floor. My father fell, he fell and now we don't know where he is. God curse them, I hope they die."

A man in a green surgical mask, who said he had been helping to evacuate the casualties, said: "It was like a powder, and anyone who breathed it in fell to the ground."

A rebel fighter in Khan al-Assal, about eight kilometres south-west of Aleppo, said he had seen pink-tinged smoke rising after a powerful blast shook the area.

Ahmed al-Ahmed, from the Ansar brigade in a rebel-controlled military base near Khan al-Assal, told Reuters that a missile had hit the town at around 8:00am.

"We were about 2km from the blast. It was incredibly loud and so powerful that everything in the room started falling over. When I finally got up to look at the explosion, I saw smoke with a pinkish-purple colour rising up," he told Reuters via Skype.

"I didn't smell anything, but I did not leave the building I was in.

"The missile, maybe a Scud, hit a regime area, praise God, and I'm sure that it was an accident. My brigade certainly does not have that [chemical] capability and we've been talking to many units in the area, they all deny it."

Ahmed said the explosion was quickly followed by an air strike. A fighter jet circled a police school held by the rebels on the outskirts of Khan al-Assal and bombed the area, he said.

His account could not be independently verified.

Syrian information minister Omran al-Zoabi said as many as 86 people were injured in the attack.

"The substance in the rocket causes unconsciousness, then convulsions, then death," he said.

Syria's deputy foreign minister Faisal Meqdad said his government would send a letter to the UN Security Council "calling on it to handle its responsibilities and clarify a limit to these crimes of terrorism and those that support it inside Syrian Arab Republic".

He warned that the violence that had engulfed Syria was a regional threat.

"This is rather a starting point from which [the danger] will spread to the entire region, if not the entire world," he said.

If chemical weapons were used, it would be the first time they had been deployed in Syria's two-year-old civil war.

US president Barack Obama, who has resisted overt military intervention in Syria, has warned Syria's president Bashar al-Assad that any use of chemical weapons would be a "red line".

Syria has one of the world's largest chemical weapons stockpiles, and the British Foreign Office said that if the attack was confirmed it would require a serious international response.

Scrambling for verification

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Carr alarmed by reports of chemical attack in Syria (ABC News)

The United States and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons both said they had not been able to independently verify whether chemical weapons had been used.

"We are looking carefully at allegations of chemical weapons use, we are evaluating them," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

"We have no evidence to substantiate the charge that the opposition has used chemical weapons," he added.

"We are deeply sceptical of a regime that has lost all credibility and we would also warn the regime against making these kinds of charges as any kind of pretext or cover for its use of chemical weapons."

The US State Department echoed those comments and the Pentagon said it was monitoring the situation.

"I have no information at this time to corroborate any claims that chemical weapons have been used in Syria," Pentagon spokesman George Little said.

"The use of chemical weapons in Syria would be deplorable."

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said the use of chemical weapons by any party under any circumstances would constitute an "outrageous crime."

Speaking at the United Nations in New York, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Australia was alarmed by the potential development.

"At least one of our like-minded partners is taking [the reports] seriously, and of course like us seeking to reach verification," he said.

"This would be a shocking precedent if it's the case."

Russia's foreign ministry backed the Syrian government's claim that the rebels were responsible, calling the attack "a dangerous escalation".

Last year US president Barack Obama said there would be "enormous consequences" if chemical weapons were used in the Syrian civil war, which has so far killed more than 70,000 people.

The most notorious use of chemical weapons in the Middle East in recent history was in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja where an estimated 5,000 people died in a poison gas attack ordered by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein 25 years ago.

ABC/wires

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, world-politics, syrian-arab-republic

First posted