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Damascus Accuses Opposition of Preparing Chemical Attack

Opposition fighters walk on a hill in Jabal al-Arbaeen, which overlooks the northern town of Ariha, the Idlib province May 26, 2015. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi/Files
Opposition fighters walk on a hill in Jabal al-Arbaeen, which overlooks the northern town of Ariha, the Idlib province May 26, 2015. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi/Files
    Damascus, London- Asharq Al-Awsat
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Damascus Accuses Opposition of Preparing Chemical Attack

Opposition fighters walk on a hill in Jabal al-Arbaeen, which overlooks the northern town of Ariha, the Idlib province May 26, 2015. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi/Files
Opposition fighters walk on a hill in Jabal al-Arbaeen, which overlooks the northern town of Ariha, the Idlib province May 26, 2015. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi/Files

The Syrian Foreign Ministry has accused rebels in Idlib province of preparing a chemical attack and frame it on the country’s army.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Ministry said: "terroristsof the so-called “Tahrir al-Sham", in cooperation with the White Helmets group, supported by their operators, and in coordination with the Turkish regime, are planning to carry out a play using chemical weapons against civilians in Idlib."

SANA quoted an official source at the Foreign Ministry as saying that two tons of chemical substances have been brought to a village over the past two days as part of the preparation for the attack.

The Ministry urged the countries supporting the rebels to stop such “games that have only left civilian victims”.

It also reiterated the government’s stance that the Syrian forces do not possess chemical weapons and have never used them.

“The Syrian Arab Republic will hold the countries which support terrorism, particularly the US, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Turkey responsible for using those toxic materials and killing innocent civilians without any moral deterrent,” the statement added.

The new claim comes as shelling resumed between the Syrian army and the rebels on Wednesday in the southern countryside of Idlib.

Idlib has emerged as the last major rebel stronghold in Syria.

In March, Turkey and Russia brokered a ceasefire between the Syrian forces and opposition groups.

However, clashes and shelling continued between the Syrian army and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the umbrella group of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.